You actually trust the browser less than the individual apps developed by different companies? I'd think the apps would have more security holes than a browser that's been tested and used by millions of people everyday.
Yeah, in general. Twitter has had XSS flaws that hit people using web browsers but I've not heared of any Twitter app exploits. I'd trust Thunderbird+IMAP more than Firefox+GMail without a doubt. I don't read my RSS feeds in a browser either, they get pulled down and converted to emails and are read in Thunderbird.
It's strategic for both parties. Google wants to get Facebook users onto their own network and Zynga needs to reduce their sole dependence on Facebook.
There is an argument in favor of marketing to the perception, though. I am sure he/she is not the only viewer that might assume they are eating their own dog food and using it behind their website. We have countless tales on HN about increasing customer interest by speeding up your site. If you want to talk about how cool your tech is, make sure your website reflects a similar attention to the important details. I think the comment is legitimate for the perspective even if the technological reality is that the slowness is completely unrelated to the database.
Also, given the popularity of CRMs and so forth, it might not be good to assume that the pages are really "static". For all we know, their site is using their database to provide content -- edited by documentation/marketing folks -- to page templates.
I agree completely. Rational users would realise that the database has little to no connection to the website's hosting, but are any of us entirely rational? The details always matter.
True, but then the rational user might conclude that if you can't manage to have a performant static website you might not be able to handle the complicated stuff.
If by CRM you mean CMS, I don't think they're using a CMS because all of the pages seem to be plain HTML based on the extension and the content type. Of course, they could be spoofing that for a number of reasons, but I think it's safe to say that their site's perceived slowness has nothing to do with the database. In any event, it's loading very quickly now.
