IE and me: Who looks stupid now?

Apparently, 2011 is one of those years when April Fools Day also lands in July.

You know that survey that said IE users were dumber than paint, which I wrote about not once but twice earlier this week? It’s all a hoax, perpetrated by a Web entrepreneur named Tarandeep Gill (if that is his real name). He fesses up here.

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Yes, I feel stupid, thanks for asking. At least I’m in good company. CNN, the BBC, NPR, and a number of other mainstream news outlets all took the bait.

Really, who could resist? It was a story tailor made for the Web. It could be captured in a Google-friendly five-word headline: “IE users are more stupid.” It had impressive-looking graphs in PDF format from a company with a cool-sounding yet entirely nonsensical name (AptiQuant). It was allegedly done by Canadians, whom we know never lie, eh? And it stuck the needle into Microsoft fanboys, which is always good sport.

Still, I shoulda known better. The numbers for the survey (100,000 respondents) were just too large for a company that obscure. The IQ scores for IE6 users (80 points or so) were too low. There was no way to drill down into the data, which should have raised some suspicions. There were no other reports of that “lawsuit” IE users allegedly were filing against AptiQuant, and there was something a bit off about blog post announcing the suit.

Gill himself notes several reasons why folks like me should have smelled a rat, including the fact that the AptiQuant website was registered only two weeks ago. (Note to self: Check DNS records for obscure survey companies from now on.)

The reason Gill’s ruse was so appealing, despite its flaws, was that it seemed to confirm what many accept as a truism: Most of the savvy users left IE a long time ago for better alternatives, and many who didn’t are — well, “inexperienced” is the nicest way to put it.

PR consultant Chris Budd has an interesting analysis of why the “IE users are stupid” story got such traction. Among his observations:

Reporters often don’t have the time to contact other known, credible sources when they’re dealing with an unknown “expert.” In the case of this story, the time element was exacerbated by the natural sensationalism of the piece, the clear simplicity of the message and the catchiness of the narrative. Any reporter and editor worth his or her salt could see this is a story that would have a lot of immediate pick up. And in the age of “viral” sharing, if you don’t get your story out first, your competition will.

For the record, though, just because this survey was bogus doesn’t suddenly make using IE a smart thing to do. I know my InfoWorld colleague, Enterprise Windows blogger Peter Bruzzese, doesn’t agree with me on this. Enterprise users are often stuck with IE, having married into the Microsoft family. Trying to break free of Redmond is little like trying to leave the Mafia. You can do it, but the process usually involves pallbearers.

Bruzzese says he uses IE by choice because Firefox crashed too often, and Chrome was only “nanoseconds faster” than IE. Whatever floats your boat, Pete. But I abandoned IE6 years ago because whenever I tried to open more than four browser windows at one time my system seized up like a quadruple-bypass patient eating a McFatty burger, and once IE got its grubby mitts on my system memory it never let go, no matter what I did.

With Firefox, on the other hand, I could open 10 browser sessions, no sweat. When Chrome came along I could open 20 and regain the memory each one was using when I closed them.

I tried other browsers. Safari for Windows crashed too often. Opera was too idiosyncratic for my tastes, and Flock sucked down memory like a wino gulps in Mad Dog 20-20. I also tried IE7, IE8, and IE9. Only the last one seems like a significant improvement, and that’s only because Microsoft appears to have consciously imitated FF and Chrome in many respects.

Still, I’m the one who looks stupid here, and not IE users. My apologies to any readers who felt insulted by those posts.

OK, Microsoft fanboys, get it out of your system. Post your jibes below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “IE and me: Who looks stupid now?,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.