I’ve never been a fan of Microsoft. Mostly because of Internet Explorer’s poor web standards and all the pain It’s caused myself and thousands of other web designers over the years. Now Microsoft has fallen even further out of favor with much of the web design community with their imposition of Bing onto its customers. Basically, Microsoft is trying to play catch-up with Google in the online advertising arena. They’ve already failed in my eyes.

Bing is now the default search engine for Internet Explorer. When the update was first released there was no choice in the matter, however Microsoft has fixed that “bug” so now it is apparently possible to switch the default search engine if you know how. I can see the logic behind promoting your own product versus the competition’s but haven’t past anti-trust cases taught you anything Microsoft? I have to think that one of the largest corporations in the world could do a little testing on their software updates before they release them. Missing such a major bug (not being able to change the default search engine in IE6) considering the touchy anti-trust subject, is inexcusable to me.

Also, in certain situations it seems that if you type an actual website URL into the address bar of Internet Explorer, you get Bing search results rather than the actual website you were looking for. (I hope this is a bug but I doubt it) Now, I realize that many people who use the internet utilize the search feature when they’re trying to get directly to a site anyway. (i.e. typing “facebook.com” into the Google search bar rather than the address bar at the top of the browser). But I expect to get directly to the site I’m looking for when I type its URL in the ADDRESS BAR. I’m not looking for search results and paid ads. Search engine FAIL in my eyes.