IE 7 won't block Google or Yahoo toolbars, head of IE team says.
There's a report, on the Register, that IE 7 doesn't work with the Google or Yahoo toolbars. I just talked with Dean Hachamovitch, the guy who runs the IE team, and he says that they tested with the Google and Yahoo toolbar and it was running on their machines (he just sent me screen captures of his personal machine running IE 7 with both the Google and Yahoo toolbar installed) and they in no way are trying to block the Google toolbar from working. He says that he commits to everyone to getting the toolbar to work and if there's something that isn't working the IE team wants to know about it so they can fix it.
This link, on Molly Holzschlag's blog (she's on the Web Standards Project) seems appropriate at this time: That's why it's called beta.
Dean also tells me that we have engineers working with Google to make sure that Google's stuff will work fine in IE 7 and Windows Vista.
It's interesting that many bloggers (both pro and amateur) have been giving me crud the past week or two for "being fast to publish" and "not calling sources to check on my reporting" but that the Register, a professional journalism outlet (they get paid for journalism, I do not) apparently didn't call our development teams to check into this report and get their side of the story. I wonder if Andrew Orlowski will link to my blog and correct his story because his report is HUGELY damaging here.
Update: Jeremy Mazner, technical evangelist for Windows Vista and IE, and Dean Hachamovitch are here giving me more details.
"Compatibility with all existing browser extensions is a top goal for Windows Vista and Internet Explorer," Dean Hachamovitch says. He says that there are some issues with the older Yahoo toolbars. The latest versions work just fine. "Absolutely positively we want everything to work," Hachamovitch says.
Another factual failure on the Register's part: The search drop down includes partners other than MSN Search. Google and Yahoo and others are included there.
Update 2: Jeremy is showing me his IE 7 running with the Google toolbar loaded. In fact, his machine is showing that Google is the default search engine selected, not MSN Search, and the toolbar is working.
You can get the latest Google toolbar here and the latest Yahoo toolbar here.
Here's some more:
1) About the toolbars: Google Toolbar is working on Jeremy's machine on IE 7 beta 1. Yahoo's version 5.6 had an issue but the current version (6.1.1) is working fine. We're using the latest Google Toolbar, version 3.0.124.6
2) Regarding search: To see providers, click the magnifying glass at the top right of the browser to dropdown the menu. On Jeremy's machine, where he has the Google toolbar and Google had set the default, it kept Google as the default.
Update 3: Corey Gouker has a screenshot of IE with the Google toolbar (and the Regsiter article in the middle of it). Corey's blog is here. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
4:34:25 PM 
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