Hotmail still not working? Use Chrome to fix it, says MS
Advises unhappy users to switch to Google's browser — Microsoft has advised Hotmail users struggling to access their email accounts to surf via Google's Chrome browser in order to successfully connect to the recently overhauled service.
Context & Ripple Effects
Hotmail's troubles are a running theme in this coverage: LiveSide asked 'what happened to' the service back in September 2008, and by February 2009 spammers had broken its CAPTCHA 'yet again', so the recently overhauled service was meant to be the reset. Instead, Microsoft is now confirming access problems and pointing stranded users at a fix — and the fix it names belongs to its chief rival.
The advice echoes a move Google itself made in September 2009, when it urged Internet Explorer users to effectively turn IE into Chrome via its plug-in; here Microsoft inverts the playbook, conceding in public that a competing browser handles its own flagship webmail better than its own.
First-order effects
- Users locked out of the overhauled service get an immediate workaround, while Microsoft's support channels absorb the cost of debugging across a browser it does not control.
Second-order effects
- Chrome gains an endorsement money cannot buy — a rival vendor steering users to it — sharpening pressure on the Internet Explorer team as webmail compatibility becomes a benchmark users can see.
Third-order effects
- If flagship cloud apps like Hotmail are judged by how they run outside their maker's own browser, default-browser lock-in weakens and browser competition shifts toward application-level compatibility rather than OS bundling.
The trend: As email moves fully into the browser, webmail providers are being forced into cross-browser neutrality, with Chrome positioned as the compatibility standard even by the company behind IE.