They didn't say who the partners were - when I think of MS partners (in their own lingo) I think of MS-oriented developer shops. Those are the devs who are their partners - MSDN subscription shops, etc. When MS people speak of "partners", I'd be hard pressed to fin people who think of Apple, Google, Facebook or Yahoo.
My suspicion is that much of the feedback (however constructive it might be) was from orgs who are primarily supportive of MS and IE, and as such, the feedback may not have been as useful as it could have been getting feedback from people about why they are not developing for IE.
But time will tell on this re: adoption rate, standards compliance and whatever innovative stuff they throw in.
Well I'd expect that Google, Facebook, and Yahoo are MSDN subscribers. Its a lot cheaper to test with MSDN licenses than to buy retail.
Exactly, who do you think the partners are for the IE team? I'd think the most popular webpages. This isn't the ASP.NET team or Silverlight team. For IE their partners are the companies they work with to make sure their sites work well with IE. I'd have to believe Facebook provides lots of feedback and Yahoo. Google probably some, but probably less so as their also a browser competitor. And certainly Fortune 500 enterprise internal sites.
At least that's what I think when I hear the term partner for IE>
I've never seen the term "IE partner" used anywhere, either in that doc or elsewhere. I have seen "MS Partner" used generically quite a lot over the years, meaning almost anyone who has any sort of business relationship (reseller, certified, etc) with MS.
So... I don't think there are any "partners" for the "IE team". I think they reached out to a variety of Microsoft partners across the board. If they'd specifically talked to Google, Facebook, etc., I suspect they'd have dropped those names, either to pass blame or try to show group decisions on certain decisions ("Apple's doing this too!").
"our top ten partner sites showcasing some of the new things you can do with IE9 are: Facebook, Agent 008ball, BMW Vision EfficientDynamics, IMDb HD Trailer Gallery, CNN, One Day in Beijing, BeatKeep, Amazon.com, The Shodo, and LA Surprise Flower-o-Scope."
Admittedly some of these sites I'd never heard of (although it doesn't mean they aren't popular). But you certainly can't deny Facebook, Amazon, CNN, and IMDB are legit top-tier sites.
My suspicion is that much of the feedback (however constructive it might be) was from orgs who are primarily supportive of MS and IE, and as such, the feedback may not have been as useful as it could have been getting feedback from people about why they are not developing for IE.
But time will tell on this re: adoption rate, standards compliance and whatever innovative stuff they throw in.