02.01.2011

Bing is Copying Google

Fascinating article about how Google set up a sting to prove that Bing was using it's search results. It seems a little sinister that Microsoft are riding on Google's expertise in order to compete with them, and how many IE users realize their data is being used this way? Big brother is indeed watching:

The only reason these pages appeared on Google was because Google forced them to be there. There was nothing that made them naturally relevant for these searches. If they started to appeared at Bing after Google, that would mean that Bing took Google’s bait and copied its results.

This all happened in December. When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled. They were also told to click on the top results. They started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing.

03.14.2011

The Things Internet Explorer Got Right

In a blogosphere dominated by SxSW updates, this little nugget documenting the rise and fall of Internet Explorer piqued my interest. Microsoft were actually very innovative with their browser in the 1990s but got lazy once they had effectively killed of Netscape.

DHTML changed web development forever. It was, however, IE4’s DOM that pushed the technology (and web development) forward by being the primary influence on the W3C’s DOM Level 1 and 2 specification. IE4 revolutionized web development in 1997, and IE would do so again a few years later.

As our profession continues to mature, it's great to see these reflections of Internet history springing up around the Web - in an industry that's all about the next big thing, it sometimes helps to understand how far we've come.