By Sean Fenlon on July 12, 2009
Dear GOOG:
This is not cool.
Stop changing your product based on my lens to your product (i.e. web browser).
As best I can tell, Google is now using a URL structure in their Chrome browser that breaks in IE, sending the user’s click to Google.com. Deliberately, I have to presume.
For example, paste the link below into IE:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=”humble+consumer”&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
[you will need to copy and paste the URL into specific browsers for this post to work properly]It doesn’t work – simple re-direct to the Google home page.
The URL structure for the exact same Google query in IE is http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22humble+consumer%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
(interesting – when pasted into Chrome, the browser re-directs to the URL structure in the very first link above)
Firefox URL query structure is even crazier http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22humble+consumer%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10&fp=Xmf0jJ9P_V0
Not good – the browser needs to be objectively viewed by the publisher of the site/service.
If publishers start telling us different stories based solely upon browser choice, all decisions regarding browsers and sites/services have to be re-thought.
People ask What Would Google Do?
The ultimate answer is if Google does it, everyone else will too.
This is not cool, but I am a mere humble consumer.
Thanks for reading (i.e. Indexing).
SPF
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