I’m using Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 5.50.
Ofttimes, when I’m typing a non-existent URL into the Explorer address line, the browser will, after searching for the URL for a few seconds, get me to an address on “http://search.msn.de”, obviously part of the Microsoft network. This page tells me that the URL I requested couldn’t be found; it sometimes also gives me alternative suggestions, especially if there’s an obvious typo in my URL.
Not that I’m paranoid or whatever, and I certainly don’t suspect Microsoft is spying my surfing all the time, but the fact that a Microsoft page tells me when a URL couldn’t be found (this could the browser do as well, no?) seems a bit strange to me. What makes me stumble even more is that today, when I tried to hop onto encyclopedia.com, this page appeared again and guess what the first alternative suggestion was: Encarta. Apparently, Redmond wants to divert users who cannot access an encyclopedia to its own product.
Even if encyclopedia.com is down, I don’t think this practice is 100 % kosher. This makes me ask the question in the subject and what the antitrust laws say about that.