I lost a bet and had to eat my socks (new, fresh pair)

By Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal on May 28, 2012 12 Comments / 4420 views

I lost a bet and ate my socks!

In 2006, contests2win.com was being re-launched as a user generated, contesting and quizzing platform.

The team building and executing the project comprised Raj Menon (COO), Nikhil Gupte (CTO), Gauri Gupte and Jaideep Bir.

Each time they would complete a part of the build, and send me a link via e-mail to test and check the feature, I would open the URL in my Internet Explorer browser.

IE was the only browser I used at that time.

The link they would send me would typically have major problems in the IE environment, and when I would yell and scream, Raj would politely tell me, “But Alok, it works very well in Chrome Firefox”

I remember getting wild by this constant “Chrome Firefox Obsession” and one afternoon held a State of the Union Address for the Company. I stated quite loudly that millions of c2w users were using IE (as evident from the Google Analytics of the site) and hence it was compulsory for the Company and its employees to use IE from then on!!

I was very clear – we will only use the Internet Browser that most of our consumers use. And that was IE. All other browsers be damned.

I got Nilanchal Panigrahi – the head of Sys Admin to get his admin team to actually go and ‘uninstall’ Chrome Firefox from each and every employee’s desktop and confirm to me that he had done the job!

Nikhil was adamant about using Firefox Chrome (he incidentally later got me hooked to web mail instead of MS Outlook) and refused to deploy and test the c2w builds on IE.

Gauri was the one who kind of balanced the rather strained relationship between me and Nikhil and managed to make everything work.

For the record, Gauri married Nikhil a couple of years later 🙂

In my many heated and passionate discussions defending the IE browser, I once had a bet with Gauri and Nikhil – that IE would always dominate the browser market share and Chrome and Firefox, etc would never come any where near it. If IE ever lost the No. 1 browser position, then, “I would eat my socks.” (Socks, because I come from a socks-making background.)

Last week, Chrome beat IE and became the Number 1 browser.

Chrome is the most popular browser in the world – source – statcounter

This afternoon, I went to SOBO Central, bought a fresh pair of socks and ate them 🙁

Nikhil and Gauri – you guys won!

Note – readers will notice the word Chrome struck out in the post. I made a mistake in the original post. The fight was about Firefox instead of Chrome and hence the same stands corrected.

****

Comments

Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal

12 Comments

asha chaudhry May 28, 2012, 11:17 am

bon appetit!
Girish May 28, 2012, 11:41 am

This is soxy!
Himanshu Agarwal May 28, 2012, 11:43 am

Ha ha ha…that’s a good post! If Chrome can make someone eat a pair of socks…the browser has got something.

But as a lay user of the internet (being someone NOT from the technology side of things), the only time I was in appreciation of Chrome was its translation capabilities. I had to analyse certain German companies and whenever I went to their website it was in German, then someone pointed me to Chrome and since then it is Chrome for me!

I don’t know what are the underlying capabilities of the two browsers, but Chrome be it!
Abhishek Bharadwaj May 28, 2012, 12:03 pm

But Alok, there was NO Google Chrome in 2006. The first version of Chrome was released only on September 2, 2008.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal May 28, 2012, 12:26 pm

Right. Refer to the discussion by my colleagues here – https://www.facebook.com/rodinhood/posts/340990219307988

I think I confused chrome with firefox, but still lost the bet.
Abhishek Daga May 28, 2012, 12:30 pm

LOL, a nice one.. So Chrome climbing up to number 1 made u eat socks 😛

Well Chrome deserves it, though I use mozilla FF.
Nayana Somaratna May 29, 2012, 5:30 am

If Alok needs medical advice, I am only a FB post away !
Abhimanyu May 29, 2012, 6:02 am

IE mainly drives its base from the novice internet users who get it as a default browser with windows, and believe me there are lots of them. But its heartening to see the better browsers getting their fair share now. Attached is the screenshot of the twitpic I uploaded on the Christmas of 2011. You can see the pace at which chrome has eaten into IE’s market share in last 3 yrs, while FF has almost been indifferent to these dynamics.
himanshu chanda May 29, 2012, 8:57 pm

Hey @Alok

While the pic and story were really funny. I was shocked to realize that you bet and said that something will remain permanent for eternity! An Entrepreneur (change maker) lives and knows nothing is eternal.

Parivartan sasaar ka niyam hai
Mahesh Khambadkone May 30, 2012, 5:56 pm

Alok, don’t worry, you’re in good company :

A certain Mark Zuckerberg focussed on his users and core business and never thought twice about mobile. He’s making amends.

A certain Bill Gates focussed on his users and core business and never thought twice about the internet. He’s making amends.

A certain Sergey Brin focussed on his users and core business and never thought twice about social. He’s making amends.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal May 30, 2012, 6:12 pm

Awesome!!!!!
Abey John June 4, 2012, 4:38 pm

Now where is that +1, like button for comments!