IE6 forcing Bing as default search engine
Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that it is looking into an issue in which users of Internet Explorer 6 are forced into having Bing as their default search engine.
"We are aware of the issue with Bing on machines running IE6 and are investigating a solution," Microsoft said in a statement. "This issue is not impacting IE7 and IE8 users."
Although it is only affecting its older browser, many people still use IE6 and Microsoft has faced a lot of over how default search preferences are set and changed within Internet Explorer.
The issue crops up just as Microsoft plans to formally launch Bing. Among its planned promotions is a huge ad campaign as well as an event Tuesday night at Seattle's Space Needle.
The IE6 issue was noted earlier on Tuesday by Search Engine Land.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
Yes, IE6 is now arcane, however corporations cannot simply "wave a wand" and make it go away.
Even IE 8 doesn't implement CSS2 properly.
IE is so far behind the other browsers now, the only people that use it as their default browser know no better.
I am a web developer so I have Chrome, IE, and Firefox open to test my work.
IE8 freezes on me when IE7 didn't.
Also IE8 still doesn't implement CSS2 properly. e.g., padding in div tags.
When I create a site it is done on standards and if the code is good, it displays well in Chrome and Firefox. When it comes to IE, I always know there will be problems, and then I have to work out how to get IE to display the site correctly too. Bloody annoying because you end up adding heaps more code or creating a style sheet for IE.
If web developers don't like coding for IE6, they are welcome to get other jobs.
If you wanna be a web developer, get to know IE6 very well.
Doctors don't complain about the blood.
In other words Microsoft's IE6 is unnecessary stupidity that has been mass bundled to the world and because of that, we have to cure their problem. IE8 is still a problem too.
This strategy will work for Microsoft because it will either result in Bing traffic going up by which point they can say that the search engine traffic is growing, or people will hate Bing and upgrade the browser.
This is a perfect example of why I try to keep away from that company. They always try to force things onto you. People choose Google and Microsoft has to force people to use their one.
They haven't changed one bit.
Think it through.
It is all about forwarding URLs.
The old IE6 URL goes to where ever they point that too.
Where they point it is purposefully done, and the fault doesn't lie in the IE6 development days, but today.
You probably don't know about that by the sound of it.
Just for grins I went to "Ding" to check it out (FF3.0.5) and decided to look at the page source. Yeesh! Looks like a dead dog rotting in a junkyard in July. B L O A T E D!
I thought that it was just the launch, it says Bing on the MSN home page for the serach (default home, not changeable). Although Bing is now coming up in place of LIVE search on FF3 and Chrome for me now at home.
I think the point is that if your search engine was Google it has gone bung and is now bing.
I was refering to the comment sting7k made "Although Bing is now coming up in place of LIVE search on FF3 and Chrome for me now at home"
The reason for that was because LiveSearch is now Bing.
Until Firefox / Chrome meet _ALL_OF_THE_FUNCTIONALITY_OF_THE_WORLDS_MOST_POPULAR_BROWSER_ then they are not really a solution at all.
IE6 (Microsoft) forces users to use Bing. No choice in the matter.
Imagine that, Microsoft forcing users to use their crap. Who would have thought.
:)
She can not understand concepts of having different web browsers any more then she understands the concept of having to choose what grade of steal her next car is made of.
The only thing that stopped her installing Chrome was it says she needed Vista or XP, but she knew she had an older version of office.
Sorry folks, if your sites (and software) don?t work on what normal people have on their PCs without them having to even know what browser they have then a lot of people will not use your site. Given that most firefox users know how to switch to IE, but most IE users don?t know how to switch to firefox, if you had to choose only one to support?
Mac users own their computers. *nix users own their computers. Winblows users are slaves to the whims of M$, own nothing (regarding their computer, of course) and are an affront to the thinking computer owner.
I explained Bing to her, and she replied why do we need it. Everyone uses Google and Google isn't broken.
I thought that was a fair point. Not to say that shouldn't compete with Google, but that it shows that people only change when they need to. If they are happy with the way they do things, they won't change.
I think Microsoft have a big hill to climb here. In the past they may have been able to do it, or resorted to bundling if they couldn't. But now they have to compete against Google and this is why I think Bing is bung.
Sounds like you either A) Manually set your default search to Google or B) Your Admin did. If IE6 is left at its default you'll go to binq
I cannot make Google the default search (which of course is what I want) and it is impossible to remove Bing, on IE8.
http://www.pupuweb.com/blog/bing-as-default-search-engine-in-ie6/
- by wgoldman66 July 10, 2009 5:48 PM PDT
- IE8 for me and bing is default. cannot change. Nice. All that arguing over go to ie8, upgrade from ie6 and what happens, problem still there in ie8. What a bunch of twits! How do you fix the problem? I don't care about your petty microsoft if bad or good junk.
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