REDMOND, Wash., Oct. 29, 2001 — In response to customer feedback regarding MSN.com, MSN marketing director Bob Visse issued the following statement:
“Last week, we launched a new version of MSN.com. When we developed the site, we tested it against the most popular browsers on the market. For people with browsers that could not access the site, we recommended that they upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer before they could visit MSN.com. After receiving complaints from people who reported problems accessing the site, we looked into this issue further and determined that we had wrongly classified some browsers as “unknown.” This classification is normally reserved for very old browsers which are known to not work on MSN.com.
“We have now fixed this problem, enabling everyone to access MSN.com. The decision to block anyone from the site was clearly in error. We want to make sure that anyone can take advantage of the great services on MSN, regardless of which browser they are using. MSN.com will be available to everyone, effective immediately.
“We apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused, and we wish to reiterate our strong support for the Web specifications developed and supported by the World Wide Web Consortium and the software industry. While it is difficult to be compliant with every published Internet standard, we focus our efforts on doing the best job we can to support the latest recommendations and deliver useful and exciting services for our customers.”
