BBC News - World's first 'tax' on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7

7 comments, 158 views, posted 1:44 pm 14/06/2012 in Teh Internet by marksyzm
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The Australian online retailer Kogan.com has introduced the world's first "tax" on use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browser.

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[1]

2:52 pm 14/06/2012

z0phi3l

Wonder how long till they get sued

2:57 pm 14/06/2012

griffin

Quote by z0phi3l:

Wonder how long till they get sued

For what? I don't think what they are doing is illegal. Stores can accept whatever credit cards they wish (or none at all). I think this is in a similar vein, but with the introduction of a 'stupid' charge.

4:28 pm 14/06/2012

backroom

Quote by RL:

Chief executive Ruslan Kogan told the BBC he wanted to recoup the time and costs involved in "rendering the website into a antique browser".

So instead of using the exact same technology to generate a pop-up saying "We are sorry but our site does not display correctly on Internet Explorer 7. Please upgrade you web browser to IE8 or later or any one of these other fine options..."
Done, finished and saved all that development time and cost.

But no. The company decides that calling out, alienating and/ or charging more to a particular group of customers is the correct way to do business.

4:37 pm 14/06/2012

backroom

Quote by griffin:

but with the introduction of a 'stupid' charge

IE has been built into Windows for nearly 20 years.
It is the defacto standard.

Quote by RL:

The amount of work and effort involved in making our website look normal on IE7 equalled the combined time of designing for Chrome, Safari and Firefox.

There might be some sense made if developers did not have to design for all the other browsers independant of, not just IE, but each other.
Perhaps if they did not spend so much time developing for other browsers... the ones that people choose to install and use instead of what is built in and perfectly capable... IE development would not be such a burdon.

I would not buy a Chevy car that had a Ford engine under the hood.
Nor would I buy any car that had two engines installed.