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Monday, February 2, 2009

Google Chrome Accesses Hotmail by Pretending It's Safari

By Adam Pash

According to weblog Google Blogoscoped, Google Chrome is spoofing its user agent at Hotmail, Microsoft's popular but much-maligned webmail application. Why?

The issue was that Hotmail barred the competitor’s browser from entering by checking the user agent. Some sites do so, often without merit and a lot of backfiring, because they think certain browsers can’t cope with their HTML/JavaScript/stylesheets. Not the case with Chrome here, apparently, which now pretends it’s a Safari browser when encountering *.mail.live.com.

If we weren't the types who give folks the benefit of the doubt, we might suggest that Microsoft's playing a touch dirty to fend off Google's competing browser. Then again, as one Microsoft employee says, Hotmail services millions of users—and Chrome is used by such a small percentage of those users—that the bug will be addressed. It's just not a high priority.

Regardless, the Google, Microsoft, and Apple power struggle via Chrome, Hotmail, and Safari is a saucy one.

Original here

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