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| Search Me,
Netscape's Final Insult |
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| Talk,
Graham Bower,
05 February 2001 | |
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As the years go by, people are becoming increasingly familiar with the Internet. These days no one goes on courses to learn how to search for things on the Internet. Instead they learn how to conduct “Power Searches.” The last thing anyone wants to admit to is being a “newbie.” Yet despite the mass adoption of the Internet we have witness over the last year, it seems most people are more in the dark about the Internet than ever - it’s just that they are afraid to admit it.
Small wonder that so many people are confused by the Internet when companies like Netscape set out to deliberately mislead them.
I can think of numerous instances where in an attempt to make thinks easier, companies have made things a good deal more confusing. Hotmail is one. Try explaining the difference between normal e-mail and Hotmail to someone who hardly knows how to turn their computer on – it’s harder than ever now that you can access Hotmail using Outlook Express. But at least Microsoft can claim that these innovations were not intended to mislead – they were just trying to be helpful.
So what has Netscape done that’s deliberately misleading? Take a look at the icon bar of Netscape 6. Notice a difference? There’s the tacky new design sure, but that’s just superficial and hardly matters. No, take another look and you’ll spot a fundamental change to their GUI that seems to have gone unnoticed by almost everyone. They’ve added a “Search” button to the right of the address field, in exactly the same place that Internet Explorer has a “Go” button. So what’s do evil about that? When you type an address into the address field of your Web browser you just hit return right? Not necessarily. Many people prefer to point and click, rather than use the keyboard. In fact, I know a lot of people who never use the address field of their browser at all. Even when they know an address, they type it in to the search field in Yahoo! rather than the address field of their browser. I found a colleague of mind at work who had got rid of the address field from her browser because she didn’t need two, and the one under the Yahoo! logo was easier to find. Try explaining to this colleague of mine that the address field is different to the search box when the bright sparks at Netscape go and put a search button right next to it.
So what possessed Netscape to perform this dastardly deed? Commercial considerations of course. The search button submits the contents of the address field to Netscape.com’s second-rate search engine, serving the unsuspecting user a banner ad in the process. Brilliant. Nicely done guys – shame you lost the browser war, eh!
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