Microsoft Tech Advice: Hotmail is broken Sir, what do I do? Tell them to use Google Chrome!
Microsoft just made a dumb move. I decided to recreate how I think the conversation went between the tech guy and his boss.
Tech guy: It seems a lot of customers are complaining about the new Hotmail. Bugs throughout the site, some of them can’t even log in.
Boss: Fix it.
Tech guy: That will take a few weeks, what do we do in the mean time.
Boss: It works fine on Google’s Chrome, get them to use that.
Tech guy: I don’t know about that, don’t you think we should focus on Internet Explorer?
Boss: Who’s the boss?
Tech guy: You are…
Boss: Exactly.
After thousands of complaints from customers over their new Hotmail interface, Microsoft has suggested that some users switch to Google’s Chrome.
To be fair Internet Explorer seems to work fine, it’s mostly Firefox and Safari users (many of whom won’t use IE) that are affected. So it kind of makes sense.
It’s still funny though.
Vince Woolery
This is just hilarious. MS is always doing something stupid like this.
Jaycob
Some days, I wish that Microsoft would scrap a fair bit of the engine behind Windows Live (As well as a significant part of their own website) and replace it with something nicer. I don’t care if it’s .NET, or whatever. So long as it keeps with standards, that’s all that matters. If it breaks in IE6 or 7, fuck it, who cares? Either upgrade, or get left behind.
Really, it just makes sense. Make something which works in the latest versions of browsers, regardless of what platform it’s on. After all, they are using the service you provide, and not the services of others. That means for a profit.
ben
Oooh, Microsoft bashing on a Apple fanboy site. How quaint and refreshing.
Jason
Where in that very small image does it say anything about Google Chrome? I can make up stories too.
Me Me
Made up story, tried it on IE6 and 8 and it works just fine
Kole
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/10/hotmail_complaints_chrome_fix/ – I linked to it at the end of the article.
The image I posted was just to show hotmail and doesn’t show the recommendation.
JstCrius
“Microsoft, via the Hotmail forum, has been advising its customers to stop using Safari 3 and Firefox 2 in order to access its free webmail service.”
Thats like telling ppl to not use windows 95 when trying to play BBC2. You cant produce software for such an old platform/browser just to make sure the 2% users useing it are satisfied.
Kole
Oh, and the recommendation was made on the official hotmail forums.
JstCrius
since when does microsoft answer hotmail customer support emails? o_O
oii-uk
why anyone uses IE is beyond me
It has always supported less graphics formats and had more errors displaying pages than any other browser
Compatibility Mode ? Whats that all about – I have never needed this in any other browser (I don’t even think its there) and it never seems to work anyway
Microsoft will always describe these problems as being caused by outdated web pages but every other browser seems to cope
Give up on IE it is dying