What's the best browser? Eulogy to Internet Explorer

[As heard on WTAG, WHYN, WHJJ 2021-05-25 - Automated Transcript]

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] On with Mr. Polito this morning, and we gave a little bit of a eulogy to Microsoft internet Explorer. Finally, almost gone. And I don't know if it will ever be completely gone. So here we go with Mr. Polito,

[00:00:17] Jim Polito: [00:00:17] Our good friend, Craig Peterson, nothing like a little rage against the machine. To introduce our tech talk guru, the master of all machines, right?

[00:00:33] He is our tech talk guru here to talk about the death of Microsoft Explorer. What is that? Joining us now? Craig Peterson. Good morning, Craig.

[00:00:48] Craig Peterson: [00:00:48] Hey, good morning. Microsoft Explorer of course had been used for years by Microsoft in order to let you go online. And it was the source of a major lawsuit against Microsoft.

[00:01:02]Right now you're talking about what's happening with this whole apple lawsuit and what directions is going to go what's happening? Microsoft had this major problem years ago, and that is. It did not have anything to do with the internet at all. Microsoft was a very much a late comer to the internet and to all of the connectivity that comes from it.

[00:01:26] And so what they did is they stole, borrowed some software from NCSA, this lab over in Europe. And use that as a basis to create a web browser. And since of course, Microsoft didn't really care so much about the internet as they never put much thought or work into it. However, Many of these kids that are doing programming thought internet Explorer is the way to go.

[00:01:54] And the people who were running the businesses who had windows on their desks, they looked at it and said in genetics blowers, what we need to do. So a large percentage of businesses over 50% of businesses designed their website. To work with internet Explorer and never bothered checking any other web browsers out there to see if they were compatible.

[00:02:19] Yeah. So Microsoft got even more and more into this and Microsoft added things to internet Explorer made it the most dangerous browser on the internet. It allows a website to take control of your computer. It allowed websites to download malicious software and start running with it. It might be Microsoft.

[00:02:41] It just sometimes drives me crazy.

[00:02:44] Jim Polito: [00:02:44] Let's roll it. You've just put a lot out there. So let's just go back and take a look at it. First of all, Dan and I were laughing earlier and you just said it. Oh, Microsoft didn't think this internet was going to be a big deal. Yeah. So bill gates is our real genius.

[00:02:59]Something comes along like the internet. Eh, so Netscape was really the big browser in the beginning. Am I correct?

[00:03:07] Craig Peterson: [00:03:07] It was one of the early Browns. Yeah, very popular one. The internet didn't really start really going anywhere until the browsers came out. NCSA mosaic was really the first one.

[00:03:22] Wow. I used that one extensively way back when and yeah. Firefox has been around. Yeah, Microsoft. Yeah. As part of an incredible internal arrogance decided that it would wire internet Explorer into the operating system, for lack of a better term, you could argue that Microsoft has never had a true operating system until the latest ones, but it hardwired the men.

[00:03:51] So now. You had places like Firefox Mozilla project and some of these other like Google, et cetera. Say, wait a minute wait. We have browsers. And there is no way to delete internet Exploder off of your computer. Oh, I forgot about

[00:04:09] Jim Polito: [00:04:09] that. Nickname, internet Exploder. Greg you're, we're talking with our tech dog guru, Craig Peterson.

[00:04:15] We're having a little bit of a way care. He's performing the eulogy for internet Explorer. So they get rid of it. Does that mean that Microsoft is out of the browsing business?

[00:04:27] Craig Peterson: [00:04:27] Oh, I never very big way. See Microsoft decided that people fought that Microsoft was it, they're the go-to people.

[00:04:35] And so they said we've got to get rid of, first of all, we've got to get out of the operating system because the courts ordered it. And so they finally did. And so now there's some competition in the browser space and then they came up with. The edge browser, you could still use internet Explorer on your windows, computer, and still came with it because so many websites were so poorly programmed.

[00:05:02] They would only ever work with this one browser. So they came up with the edge browser, which was their answer to everything. And of course it didn't work so good and it didn't work with most websites that had any complexity to them. And so they came up with another edge. Browser and they called it an edge because it was a completely different browser.

[00:05:23] And then they went and said, okay this just isn't working so well. So nowadays Microsoft edge browser is, do you have a drum roll? Oh yeah. Hold on. Hold on a second. I got it. Ready. Alright. Here Microsoft edge is actually Google Chrome. Are you kidding? There you go. No it's based on what Microsoft did is Google had open source.

[00:05:55] In other words, it made available the source code, the program, and they call the chromium and chromium is the base for for the Chrome web browser, Google Chrome web browser. Wow. So now Microsoft edge, the latest versions of edge, they have completely benched all of them. Terrible software or web browsers anyway, still got plenty left.

[00:06:19]And they are now, if you're running Microsoft edge, you are actually running Google Chrome and Microsoft of course has made changes to it and is tracking you in different ways. And Jen number one question I have from listeners really is. What browser should I use? And

[00:06:38]Jim Polito: [00:06:38] Your answer to the question?

[00:06:41] Craig Peterson: [00:06:41] Sure. It depends but Firefox. Wow.

[00:06:47] Jim Polito: [00:06:47] I haven't been I haven't been using it. Here at work, I use Chrome. I didn't use it on my home laptop Firefox. But I hardly use my laptop at home. Anymore, because I use my smartphone or my tablet to do most things when I'm at home. So that's all very interesting now let's move on to something that came up earlier and you made the recommendation, is that Jim start using duck go.

[00:07:20] For your searching because they don't track you and they have a better rhythms. They don't get political with their algorithms. You said, Jim, if you're going shopping, yes, Google is still the best place to go. But if you want information, it's duck go. This came up earlier because we've been discussing the power.

[00:07:44] That Google exerts in politics. And, there's real evidence that if you search for a liberal candidate for office versus a conservative, you're going to get. Better results of the liberal or the liberals results are going to be at the top of results, as opposed to a conservative and Google will say it's the algorithm, it's based on hits and bologna, people make out algorithms.

[00:08:12] The algorithms don't drop from the sky, right?

[00:08:15] Craig Peterson: [00:08:15] Yeah. You're absolutely right. Yeah. And there is no such thing as artificial intelligence, at least not in this day and age, but here's the, I, I mentioned this to you before I think, but here's that quote from a study that was done in a top on this is student news daily.

[00:08:32] But he was talking about a study that I read. We found significant pro liberal bias on Google enough, quite easily to have flipped all three congressional districts in orange county, California for Republican to Democrat. Okay. Very big deal. And that the study looked at the 2016 looked at 2018 as well.

[00:08:57] I haven't seen any good studies out yet about 2020, but Google and in you. And I saw this Google goes in and. Purposely makes changes to the recommendations, their search results. So you can look for a story and hardly find any evidence of it. And yet that story was covered by all of the major news agencies, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, you name it, they all discuss it.

[00:09:28] And yet you look forward on Google and it just doesn't show up. So you're right. And now the rhythm of a computer program is written by a person. Computers are not writing the code and there are biases in everything you and I would agree. We're bias, right? Thousands of articles, of course, thousands of articles.

[00:09:51] And I put together six to 10 of them every week that I think are important. That's showing some bias why you thought they were important. And that's the reason you're talking about things today, George foil, and then other things, right? Because you think they're important. And so that bias leaks out.

[00:10:09] And when it comes to Google and almost all of these big tech, not only does it leaked out, they enforce their bias on. You, which is why I recommend duck go. And then for browsers, Firefox Mozilla Firefox is a good general browser. There are some reasons not to use it. And I still recommend epic API C if you want very private browsing, if not, quite as good as it used to be, but it's also okay.

[00:10:39] Based on chromium. It's basically Google Chrome that they ripped. All of the tracking code out of epic browser.com is where you can find it online. Oh, this has been

[00:10:49] Jim Polito: [00:10:49] fantastic. Very helpful as usual and Firefox and duck go. And that is Craig's opinion, his well-educated opinion, but that's his opinion.

[00:11:02] Look. Greg, I've got an example for you, and then I've got to let you go, Kathy and I went to a museum. With the boys in New York city this past weekend and the museum, the it's called the Frick museum. It's right near the met and their location is undergoing renovations. They're actually in an old mansion.

[00:11:23] And so they're in a temporary location where they couldn't show their entire collection. So they picked from their collection. What they thought was best, the curator. Came up with what they thought was best in their opinion, in their collection. And that's exactly what Google people are doing, except it involves politics, not art.

[00:11:51] Yeah. Politics. And that's the issue I have with it. I'll take the opinion of a curator who will say, this is what we think is the finest in our collection, but not Google. No, not it comes to politics.

[00:12:06] Craig Peterson: [00:12:06] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you're right, doing that doctor go by the way, you can set it as your default search engine on your Android device, on your iOS device, on your computers.

[00:12:18] You can, it's integrated everywhere. It's just not the default. Yeah. I think

[00:12:22] Jim Polito: [00:12:22] it's great. Craig, how is your lovely wife doing? How is her recovery going from her fall?

[00:12:27]Craig Peterson: [00:12:27] I am totally amazing. You saw the doctor yesterday. And she is only three weeks now, post-op emergency surgery and she's doing better than most of the patients had six months.

[00:12:40] Wow. So amazing. Yeah. She's, I'm doing amazing. That's great.

[00:12:45]Jim Polito: [00:12:45] The center. Our best. And then how do people get in touch with you so that you can send them while your best?

[00:12:52]Craig Peterson: [00:12:52] If you'd go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe, you can subscribe, get the newsletter. I'm going to send you a bunch of little special reports there, five to 10 pages telling you what to do to help make your life safer. All it's all free. Okay. I'm going to try to squeeze you for anything, but you do have to sign up and I'll send those to you all automatically. You'll get my, not quite weekly with Karen down newsletter as well. And you can also get links right there to the podcast, so you can listen to my whole shows on the weekend.

[00:13:27] Great.

[00:13:27] Jim Polito: [00:13:27] Craig Peterson everybody, our tech talk guru, Craig, I look forward to it talking with you next week.

[00:13:33] Craig Peterson: [00:13:33] You too, Jim. Take care. Thanks.