IE browsing and searching and search engine dominance

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Stewart, William C (Bill), RTSLS" <billstewart () att com>
Date: July 8, 2004 5:48:44 PM EDT
To: Brett Glass <brett () lariat org>, David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: IE browsing and searching and search engine dominance

Hi, Brett - You're incorrect about a couple of fundamental details,
though your points about MS spyware and its potential uses in
search engine dominance are unfortunately right on.

First of all, if you tell Microsoft to look for cnn.com
and let it add in the http:// syntax if it needs it, and maybe a www.,
it'll do that itself, without contacting the search engine.
If you don't include the .com at the end, it'll try a search.

Second, you _can_ tell it what search engine to use,
or tell it not to use one at all.
You can find this in the IE Help by looking in the index at
"Search Button", though I never noticed it before the Verisign flap.
Start IE, hit Search, hit Customize,
look at the small collection of search engines (Google's not there),
hit Autosearch Settings, and look at the much longer collection of
search engines (Google's there.)

On the other hand, even if it does use a search engine,
it does so by calling http://auto.search.msn.com/long-string-of-stuff
which redirects to your chosen search engine,
so MS still gets to find out what you're searching for,
even if you've gone to the work of not using their search.
One way to test this is to change your proxy to something incorrect,
try to look up something, and look at the error message about
not being able to reach http://auto.search.msn.com/long-string-of-stuff
-
if you've chosen Google, you'll see it referenced in the string.

Google has their own way to implement this kind of feature,
which is the "Google Toolbar" for IE - helpful features but
also spyware from a company that's Not Evil.  I don't use it,
and I also turn of Microsoft's autosearch.  Alexa's got some
similar things - they're also competent and I don't use them.
And there are dozens of evil spyware companies providing
extra search toolbars or shopping toolbars or whatever,
which I periodically have to clean off of less technical
family members' computers when the popups get too annoying.

Verisign's feature was far more invasive and broken,
because they return a pointer to their search engine site
regardless of what application you're planning to use -
even if it's not a web browser -
it prevents your browser from implementing the search function
you configured for this case, provides a broken stub email server
(which is an improvement over their original badly broken server),
and fails to implement any other protocols at all.

I normally use Mozilla, where the search function gets triggered
if you hit the Search button instead of just hitting Enter.
It's a really nice feature, and I use it all the time.

                Bill Stewart, bill.stewart () Pobox com







-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/