Google Chrome Accesses Hotmail By Pretending It’s Safari

According to weblog Google Blogoscoped, Google Chrome is spoofing its user agent at Hotmail, Microsoft’s popular but much-maligned webmail application. Why?

The issue was that Hotmail barred the competitor’s browser from entering by checking the user agent. Some sites do so, often without merit and a lot of backfiring, because they think certain browsers can’t cope with their HTML/JavaScript/stylesheets. Not the case with Chrome here, apparently, which now pretends it’s a Safari browser when encountering *.mail.live.com.

If we weren’t the types who give folks the benefit of the doubt, we might suggest that Microsoft’s playing a touch dirty to fend off Google’s competing browser. Then again, as one Microsoft employee says, Hotmail services millions of users—and Chrome is used by such a small percentage of those users—that the bug will be addressed. It’s just not a high priority. Regardless, the Google, Microsoft, and Apple power struggle via Chrome, Hotmail, and Safari is a saucy one.