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I write on a number of blogs sites, mostly for 451Press but also at Web TV Hub about YouTube videos. Recently I’ve noted a problem with the YouTube videos I write about. A number of times that videos I want to view or to reference in my posts aren’t playing.

I thought it was a problem with the YouTube site and mostly just looked for other versions of the videos to use.

There was one I wanted to show to Mr JM. We’ve been watching the Planet Earth series by David Attenborough and there’s a number of bird mating dances that are quite funny. It’s truly amazing what some creatures do when there’s a possibility of sex.

Yes, that’s a bird making that big mouth face.

But the video wouldn’t run. I mentioned it to Mr JM and he promptly opened up Internet Explorer and tried the same video there – it worked perfectly.

So what’s going on? Why did he react by trying the same site in IE? It turns out he’s found quite a few sites that don’t work properly in Firefox. He says there is an ongoing effort by Microsoft to get sites to programs their pages specifically for Internet Explorer and this can mean people trying to use Firefox to view the pages may experience problems.

He’s not sure of the precise reasons but thinks it has to do with the fact that Internet Explorer is tightly linked into Windows and Firefox isn’t. This makes it possible for the giant to create conditions sure to piss off Firefox users and so remove the competition.

The Australian Village Cinemas site has converted over and will not run on Firefox – it actually closes Firefox without warning - and there are login problems on the Swords and Knives site he has membership on. The problem seems to be quietly spreading and I wonder how many others, like me, think there’s just a glitch on the site and haven’t realized it’s a campaign?

Those who regularly use Microsoft Office products have seen the results of Microsoft removing the competition; Office has got larger and slower with every generation and it keeps requiring users to learn new ways to do things they have long since mastered.

So if you’re a Firefox user, and run into problems with access to sites or content, try it in Internet Explorer and if it works there, complain to the site.