jlivingood - 3:08 pm on Aug 6, 2009 (gmt 0)

@incrediBILL re: "Most websites are running "www." free these days and to make sure their domain is canonicalized in the search engines actively redirect from the "www." version to the shorter non-www version, so Comcast is going to lose a ton of type in traffic if you only trigger based on the presence of "www."."

In my personal opinion, I think folks recognize that we'll lose some traffic but with "www." we know with a high degree of certainty that it is http or https, and so not as likely to cause technical problems in edge cases. It is a more conservative and less lucrative approach but less controversial and less potentially problematic.

BTW, **very** interesting that FF added that www - that really does explain the difference you saw. It had us all scratching our heads here - mystery solved. :-)

JL