Wal*Mart Video Downloads, and Cyber-Snobs
February 7, 2007
Wal-Mart’s new video download service got a lot of criticism on blogs yesterday. For example:
- This sucks and doesn’t work in Firefox.
- … not only is it DRM infected but it is so badly broken in Firefox I can’t see enough of it to figure out what is broken.
- It works fine in Internet Explorer, but the CSS is not loading properly in Firefox. One designer’s opinion: “Somebody really fucked up.”
- Wal-Mart’s new video download service: how many ways it doth suck.
These blogosnobs are missing the point. The fact that Wal*Mart’s video download page doesn’t work in Firefox is irrelevant to 90% of web users, and to at least that percentage of Wal*Mart customers. They get their browser from Micro*Soft*Mart. This majority doesn’t whine when some obscure option doesn’t work, unlike the above-quoted opinionated outposts of openness.
