Windows Live
Some of you may have noticed Microsoft’s new adCenter as well as the Windows Live search engine. Are these really a competition for Google?
Well, this will be my own opinion on the matter, all statistics aside. I have told Microsoft on countless occasions by means of their AdCenter Feedback and Windows Live Feedback forms that they will never even start to pose a threat to Google if they continue to disregard web standards and other obvious compatibility and usability concerns.
For instance I am a Mac user and employ Safari as my primary browser for simple web surfing. Windows Live will not work with Safari; it simply displays a search box and the Windows logo. I have also tested it with a screen reader for the visually impaired and it is absolutely terrible. Do you expect someone who actually requires the aid of a screen reader such as JAWS to be able to “click” on a button to conduct a search? Google on the other hand runs quickly and smoothly in any browser, even on a PDA, cell phone, or Sony PSP.
Microsoft adCenter
Now on to Microsoft adCenter, check out the message I get in all my browsers: “Microsoft adCenter does not currently support the web browser you are using. Please sign in using Internet Explorer 6+. More about system requirements.” The “More about system requirements” link did not work in Safari. In case you were wondering why I have so many browsers installed, it is to prove a point, Microsoft does not care about anyone but themselves, and even then the support they provide is pathetic. I should mention the site still did not work in the now defunct Internet Explorer browser for Mac. So why would I even want to sign up for AdCenter when Google and Yahoo both offer excellent advertising solutions? Well, Microsoft is a large company that wants to make lots of money as well as compete with Google’s dominance over online advertising. Simply put, I wondered if adCenter could make me more money than my current advertisers. On a side note on my websites Yahoo Ads seem to have a higher Cost Per Click (CPC) while AdSense has a higher Click-through rate (CTR).
After sending a very angry letter to Microsoft via adCenter’s feedback form, I attempted to sign up for adCenter on my roommate’s PC. His anti-spyware application kept popping up saying this page was trying to compromise my computer’s security settings. The next day at work I tried again on a Dell laptop, on which Microsoft’s Active-X technology was disabled under Internet Explorer 6’s security settings. I enabled it and then when I tried to signup I got a pop-up stating that the security certificate does not match up with the web address of the site I am on, I click OK. While filling out the form I noticed that some of the drop down menus were empty and I was not able to click on the check boxes. I gave up for few weeks. Then today I was finally able to complete the sign up process using my beloved Firefox! I downloaded the User Agent Switcher 0.6.8 Firefox add-on by Chris Pederick, switched my user agent to “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)”, and was able to sign up without a hitch.
So does Microsoft stand a chance? Probably, they definitely have the means to compete, but little things like this are a huge turn-off for some people such as myself. They need to start worrying about compatibility issues; even though Microsoft would have it otherwise, people do use other software.
For a list of web browsers I used to test adCenter please read my Best Mac Web Browsers post.
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