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.
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>