
Most popular browser missing (Chrome)... - chrisacky
http://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser
======
chrisacky
Original poster here. I came across this when one of my friends accounts was
clearly compromised. They posted one of those "OMG! LOOK AT WHO VIEWS YOUR
ACCOUNTS!" on lots of friends walls.

I wanted to check out what this link actually did, so I did a simple:

    
    
        wget www.facebook.com/?redirect=somebadlink.com > site.txt
    

But the wget failed because of the lack of a supported user agent, and
Facebook instead served me up this page.

I really just had a little chuckle to myself, because, while this is
_extremely_ passive aggressive, it's not really hard to expect otherwise. I
would do exactly the same if I were Facebook.

\-------------

I'm just suprised that they don't link to either webkit based browsers
(Chrome/Safari). You can only assume that when one of your biggest threats is
Google (and MS own 1.5%~) you probably aren't going to send more users to
Google's way.

All in all, it just made me laugh, since if you are going to suggest a modern
browser, you surely can't ever give props to Internet Explorer ahead of any
webkit based browser? IE is still struggling to implement the most basic HTML5
features.

~~~
reinhardt
Seriously? Not really hard to expect otherwise? I guess it's ok then for
Google to drop FB from its search results, after all it's one of its biggest
threats, right?

~~~
nknight
I'd be fine with that. In fact, it'd probably be an objective improvement with
regard to my search results.

Not all of us believe search engines have some magical obligation to be
complete or impartial. If you don't like the results you get from one, try
another.

~~~
leot
... because in the long-run, everything will work better if everyone just
behaves selfishly ... ?

~~~
nknight
I decline to engage in a debate with someone who has decided he can divine my
worldview from a single comment about privately-owned search engines.

Hint: I'm a socialist.

------
ajross
For clarity: the link is to the generic "unsupported browser" landing page.
Chrome (and Safari) are definitely "supported" browsers. Facebook just doesn't
show their logos or provide a download link to them.

~~~
enomar
How do you know that Chrome and Safari are supported? Is there some
documentation of this? A list somewhere? If so, Facebook should at least link
to that page from here.

~~~
fromhet
Because chome is 1. quite new and 2. auto-updating without neither asking or
notifying users (and that is G-R-E-A-T).

Safari I don't know, are FB obligated to inform people of every possible
choise? Nope, they aren't. Now let's discuss something more interesting than
this dull facebook page!

~~~
Splines
> _Because chome is 1. quite new and 2. auto-updating without neither asking
> or notifying users (and that is G-R-E-A-T)._

You know that, but there's no guarantee whatsoever that someone landing on
this page knows that.

It's in FB's best interest to inform people of what works and what doesn't.
They certainly don't test every single browser out there, so putting the
browsers they test on onto this page keeps users on the happy path.

~~~
EricDeb
FB really doesn't test all major browsers? That would be very surprising to me
as there are only 5 or 6 major ones.

------
Splines
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Not to say that the people working at FB are stupid, but odds are that someone
at FB made this page several years ago and this page has languished on the
backburner with no attention since then.

~~~
amitamb
I don't think this page wasn't updated for long time. It has IE logo of IE9+.
So it was updated at least after IE9 release and by that time Chrome was major
browser.

IE9 was released April Last year.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_9>

~~~
Splines
Good point. Still, I argue that FB doesn't have any sort of ulterior motive
with not showing a webkit-based browser or what-have-you.

~~~
weixiyen
On the grounds that they are stupid?

------
SideSwipe
Well they have funding from Microsoft, and Google is now their leading
competitor...not like it's unexpected. They probably thought it was funny.

------
sp332
Hey, Opera got mentioned! That never happens :)

~~~
Peteris
In this case all it means is that Facebook thinks it's harmless.

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nextparadigms
Wow. Are they seriously pulling this one on Google? That seems so low to me.

~~~
altrego99
I don't think it is unfair. The point is you'd always leave out something or
the other. The objective is to get the person into a proper browser, without
scaring them with way too many options - and not to be fully politically
correct.

~~~
mzarate06
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I will say that I don't look at
it from being fair vs. unfair. It's purely silly, based on Microsoft's and
IE's browser credentials. IE is arguably the worst browser out there, and has
been for some time. To see it first on a list of "we support these browsers"
is comical.

~~~
bradwestness
As is including Firefox and Opera, but not the second most popular browser.
Although it's very possible that they decided which browsers to include back
in '09 or earlier and just haven't revisited the decision since.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browser...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_\(Source_StatCounter\).svg)

~~~
duaneb
That's out of date. Chrome is now the top browser, IIRC.

~~~
zobzu
On ONE stat site. On all others its 2 or 3.

It's certainly an important browser market share wise tho.

------
SeoxyS
Don't forget, they're also pulling this on Apple.

Chrome and Safari are both missing, even though they're the two most modern
browsers available today. All the browsers they're suggesting are way behind
WebKit-powered Chrome & Safari in terms of HTML5 support.

~~~
nooooooo
So, how much of the Google kool-aid have you ingested lately?

~~~
koeselitz
I think if you drink Google kool-aid and Apple kool-aid at the same time, it
balances out.

~~~
ajross
With the single side effect that you become a WebKit nut, as evidenced above.

~~~
koeselitz
Wouldn't that mean you're drinking Konqueror kool-aid?

------
aninteger
There's a subreddit on reddit about First World Problems. This doesn't even
seem like it would qualify for that.

Sorry, I just don't get why this was voted up or is that important.

~~~
esolyt
The fact that Chrome is not there implies a possible animosity towards Google,
which makes this interesting.

------
WimLeers
I've worked at Facebook (internship). They use Chrome/Chromium extensively for
development. My guess is that this is just not a high-priority thing to
change. One of Facebook's mantras is "Focus on Impact" (others: "Move Fast",
"Be Bold" …). This is not high impact.

There's even proof that they collaborate quite nicely: less than two weeks
ago, Facebook engineers went to talk to Chrome DevTools engineers. Goal:
improve Chrome's timeline to improve Facebook's Timeline, and vice versa.
Source:
[https://plus.google.com/113127438179392830442/posts/Kgk78six...](https://plus.google.com/113127438179392830442/posts/Kgk78sixgYp).

------
brudgers
Google and Facebook compete for advertising dollars. Chrome provides Google
with user telemetry. The reasoning behind Facebook's selection of options is
no different than the reason Google's search results pages lack "Like"
buttons.

------
ralfd
hacker news is jumping the shark.

------
neya
I'm sure facebook has done this on purpose, because they've gone an extra mile
to include Opera (though an excellent browser, it has a quite low market
share), but not Chrome.

------
dm8
For clarity - they should add logos of all supported browsers and versions
too. I guess they don't support IE5.

On a side note: Netflix doesn't support Chrome on new video player. Yesterday
I was watching movie on Chrome and I was dumbfounded when I was given
notification that this is not supported browser.

------
greyfade
My question is, why do they have this page at all in the first place?

If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. If there's a known-bad client, it seems
reasonable to me to show a notification of that fact on the "front" page. (Not
being a Facebook user, I don't know how they might set it up.)

------
nextstep
Wow, Opera over Safari even? It's obvious who Facebook feels is their
competition now.

~~~
gokhan
They don't need to promote Safari for Mac users. No one on Windows use safari.
Safari does not belong to that page in my opinion.

~~~
nerdfiles
They don't _need_ to support IE either, by this reasoning...

~~~
dpark
They might need to support _recent_ versions of IE.

------
mratzloff
Cool! I just downloaded IE 9 for Mac. Since they recommended it to me and all.

Also of note: all of those links are nofollowed. God forbid Facebook properly
links to something it's explicitly, you know, linking to.

------
alanh
Almost more interesting than the omission of a browser from a vehemently self-
declared rival is the omission of Flock & RockMelt, in my opinion. (They are,
of course, browsers with “built-in social” & Facebook integration.)

~~~
bradwestness
Well, Flock is discontinued and both are really just re-skinned versions of
Firefox.

~~~
alanh
That’s not even true — RockMelt is WebKit-based.

And obviously, it’s not the browser engine that is relevant, but rather the
Facebook integration…

------
zerostar07
Same reason why facebook does not allow AdSense.

------
mynameishere
And here's how you'd actually induce this error, I suspect:

<http://imgur.com/hRqkB>

...so really, who is seeing this page who isn't aware of Chrome and Safari?

~~~
alanh
Um… Internet Explorer 6 users, whom are almost certainly the intended
audience.

------
redemade
opera? wtf

------
aneth
Who the hell cares? Take a deep breath of chill the fuck out and don't read so
much into things.

I doubt they spent much time debating which browsers to add here, or that this
came out of a strategy meeting with Zuckerberg. I wouldn't be surprised if
this was designed before Chrome was popular (perhaps with some styling fixes
since then).

Even if they did exclude Chrome intentionally, they are entitled to promote
whichever browsers they want to promote for whichever reasonable non-evil
reasons they want.

~~~
patrickaljord
Was it designed before Safari too? This is really pathetic. Nothing to get mad
at but still ridiculous from Facebook.

~~~
DrJokepu
You don't need to download Safari on the Mac and Safari on Windows is, well,
not the best experience ever so I understand them not actively recommending
it.

~~~
RandallBrown
I actually saw someone in the wild using safari on windows. It was quite a
shock.

------
hsparikh
FWIW, I haven't been able to load my facebook newsfeed on Chrome for the last
3-4 days.

~~~
evan_
disable your extensions. It's working just fine in chrome for me.

~~~
hsparikh
i have been using a variety of extensions (bitly, etc.) for awhile now and
have never had an issue like this before. I can log into fb, but nothing shows
up on the initial page.

~~~
evan_
try it anyway- extensions update automatically in the background. I've
definitely had issues with buggy extensions breaking sites.

