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.
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.
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