What if Google blocked Youtube from Internet Explorer users and put a direct link to download Chrome?

That would be an epic lawsuit.

I tried Chrome and absolutely hated it. I use Firefox. However my boyfriend loves Chrome. Would I give up YouTube for Firefox? Maybe.

@chelseababyy What I really want to know is: Do you think this situation would be IE’s death?

I’m in. Anything that messes with Redmond is OK with me.

A lot of people use IE because they are forced to. At work. Where YouTube is blocked anyway. They wouldn’t even know.

I don’t go to youtube that much so I can live without it. However IE sucks big green ones so I switched to firefox. Haven’t tried chrome yet, but firefox makes my heart smile, so if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!

It is very unlikely. It is just that sort of thing that got Microsoft in trouble with the Justice Department.

I love IE, been using it for over a decade and wouldn’t change it. I might download chrome just so I can use youtube once in a while, but to be honest I don’t even have it on my favourites, and only use it to upload my own videos for others, never to watch stuff.

@RafBM Doubtful.

See, they’re only “not supporting” IE6 though. Most of those visits are from corporate users whose IT departments are stuck in the stone age (for valid reasons too, though, like intranet software not compatible with more modern browsers.) Any regular computer user has long since been upgraded by Windows Update to IE7. Maybe even 8.

So in short, it’s great for the internet (especially us lowly web designers) for IE6 to bite the dust, but it ain’t really happening anytime soon. Designing for that browser though, comes at a premium now. Which is why youtube won’t support it any more.

But your dream? EPIC.

Even worse, what if I had to translate your text into another language?

Who uses Internet Explorer? ew..

Either the masses react against Google for turning more and more into Microsoft making Google loose some appeal and support OR Microsoft with its recent merge with Yahoo would just rebrand IE, repackaged and all, but with almost the same technologies. They can even use Yahoo as platform to execute this new browser, playing the field like how Google launched Chrome.
Basically, it’s either MS adapts to Google, or Google adapts to MS. In the end, they’re all corporations competing for our clicks.

@gailcalled You mean my writing is overcomplicated? That’s fine because English is not my primary language and I have the habit of writing complicated sentences in French… sorry, I’ll try to simplify my writing…

This would be awesome. IE has crashed too many computers in my household to keep being the default. I switched to Firefox and it was fine, but chrome is stellar.

I think apple did something similar on one of their sites (was it mobileme?). It said IE is not supported (even IE 8) and suggested Safari or Firefox. I think blocking IE users from a huge site like youtube would hit them pretty hard, especially considering the amount of video being uploaded ever second. I think in the end, Google would get bad press for it, just the way Apple is getting bad press for denying the Google Voice app in the appstore. Probably won’t happen although it could significantly lower the amount of IE users.

They have a message for like IE6 or 7 now saying that they are phasing it out

@RafBM I’m impressed that you are on this site with another language than English as your primary! Welcome to Fluther!

No, I don’t think it world be the end of Explorer – even AOL Online has devoted followers; IE more so. And Explorer could pull a similar trick to the YouTube one you thought of, by making a deal with Amazon or somebody else with a huge amount of traffic.

Have you heard of Microsoft’s massively huge legal case in regards to bundling IE with Windows in Europe? To summarize, it gave them an unfair advantage over their competition and the EU fined them millions of dollars a day until they fixed it and promised to take proper steps in the future to not have such an advantage.

I think the same thing would happen if Google tried to force Chrome down people’s throats. That and people would abandon YouTube, which will never happen.

It would be the most stupid move Google could ever do, beyond throwing their company in the garbage.

No offense to your dream, I also want to see IE die, but I support the proper methods of doing this such as embracing new web standards and designing primarily for Firefox.

It’s funny how both Google and Microsoft are huge companies, yet people seem to have a warm fuzzy for Google and a cold shoulder for Microsoft.

@daloon Google, with their huge database of tracking every single human on the planet (yes they crawl your e-mail even if it’s not g-mail) is the scariest of all! Government can’t randomly use that database but if you are somehow suspicious (without a reason), the most corrupt government of all (the US) will crawl everything and if you mailed a joke about mushrooms back in ‘92, you bet your ass you’ll be arrested! I’m just lucky not to live in that broke nazi regime but everything Google is blocked here, or used via Proxies and tor.

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html

I think it’s already somewhat implemented – I used to get annoyed using firefox and seeing the ‘download Chrome’ link on youtube all the time. It actually made me switch to Chrome to get rid of it, that and the recommendation of a few of my friends – I missed firefox at first but I’m still using Chrome.

@daloon the US government is the most corrupt government in the world? Wow, the world is in a lot better shape than I thought. For the record, I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never known anybody to get arrested because they mailed bad jokes to anyone else.

@RafBM I’m curious why you’re so keen on killing IE. What harm does it do you personally?

@Gundark IE is the only desktop browser that scores less than 85/100 on the Acid3 test It scores 20/100 with IE8 and even less with IE6 and IE7. This single little piece of software is the only reason why we, web designers and developers, need to do “CSS hacks” to have our layouts rendered correctly for everyone.

@Gundark I think you meant to direct your comment to @martijn86. He was the one who called the US govt corrupt. Not me.

@daloon Oops, sorry, you’re right. That little drop down list bit me. @martijn86—my previous comment was directed at you.

@RafBM Interesting, thanks for the info.

Google would never do that because advertisers would pay less. They would pay less because there would be less “eyes” on there advertisements. But a world without IE would be a better one.

Thing about IE is that it’s kinda built into the Windows operating system. Not sure if it works on newer versions, but in XP, you can actually use Windows Explorer with the Internet.