Talk about pulling the cotton wool over our eyes. I suppose it was obvious something like this would happen since Micro$oft dominate the net. Don't say I didn't warn ya.
http://www.anybrowser.com/smarttags.html

There's this too if your interested
http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/evil_smarttags.htm

This stuff appears pretty old but I'm sure it hasn't been forgotten.

I remember these, where M$ programs IE to stick in their own "pay for" links on webpages, without the webmaster having any control.

If IE finds words which it recognises, it'll create a link on the fly to whatever business that's paying. And these links will be identical to other oficial links on the site.

I really don't think this will happen, and if it does there'll be serious controversy. Copyright cases will arise because a site will not display as it should, and think of all the visitors websites will loose when a person clicks a link they think is part of the site.

Those who think a simple META tag will keep IE at bay are naive methinks. IE ignores no-cache directive usually, it'll hardly stay well-behaved.

This is even worse than M$ not including Java in XP, but requiring those who want it to download it off Windows update themselves.

They've really got to start playing it clean for a while. Maybe if they tried to improve their software in their free time, instead of screwing other companies?

Garth Farley

I've got a semi-dumb question; how do I enable these 'smart tags' on my browser? ... or do I need Windows XP?

I use Windows ME and IE6

This function has not been included yet, AFAIK. Microsoft proposed this, but there was such uproar that they withdrew it.

GF

AFAIK?
I thought the whole point of the articles were that they (microsoft) withdrew it but they thought they might keep it.

Hi,

I would view this news article skeptically. I, for one, have never heard of "Smart Tags". In addition, the writing was not at all professional and had a few grammatical and factual mistakes. For example, this site obviously doesn't realize that Opera and Mozilla are far more popular than Netscape, and as a result, they seem to expect Netscape to be the most popular browser. Any site concerning browsers that is outdated should not be trusted, IMO.

Even if they are doing this, I see absolutely nothing wrong with this! They own IE, and they have the right to do whatever they wish. For example, Opera puts banner ads in an attempt to get users to pay. I bet if Microsoft did that with IE, thousands of news sites would be jumping all over them. But why is nobody complaining about Opera? The fact is, Microsoft owns Internet Explorer, and if you're not satisified with the way they're running things, then Unix, Macintosh, Mozilla, and Netscape are always available for your usage.

I don't think it's that simple.

First, Opera is freeware with banner ads activated. But those who use IE do so as it's included in the Windows package, which we pay for. For Microsoft to place banner ads on the desktop would be crazy!

But just because Microsoft owns it's products, and can do with them what they want, it doesn't mean thay will. Ultimately the company is going to do what it can to make huge profits, and this is only possible by offering decent value for money and not pissing people off.

Imagine if every document that you print from Word had a footnote saying something promo like "Formatted using Microsoft Word, only $99" or even worse "Visit www.amazon.com for a 10% discount now, quote ABCEDS". Can you imagine how many people would pay for software that does that?

Microsoft spands a helluva lot of cash each year on customer satisfaction surveys, trying to make things better (sadly it still hasn't copped on that we'd prefer stable s/w that's released late than buggy programs on time). It knows that if it does something badly wrong, it's going to loose money.

And I don't believe it's only Microsoft that would get criticised for doing this. Adobe would get a similar ***-kicking if it tried that on it's Reader application.

It might have been a dodgy article, but I read about this a few months back in PC Pro, where there was similar criticisms.

GF

Hi Garth,

I realize that Microsoft will do everything to keep people happy, but I'm just pointing out that there's no point in constantly criticizing Microsoft for their actions. So if they do do something stupid like add "smart tags", don't sit around complaining about them and calling them names. You still have Opera and Mozilla/Netscape.

Moreover, IE is technically free. It's simply packaged with Windows. When you pay for Windows, you should expect only the OS - the free browser that comes pre-installed is only a "bonus". And Microsoft offers free downloads/upgrades on their website. As far as I'm concerned, it is still free.

Talking of dirty tricks, have you read about MSN's anti-opera consipracy?

http://my.opera.com/dev/discussion/openweb/20030206/

Makes interesting reading