I have just logged on to Facebook and saw at the top of the page the following:

So Facebook now wants to take over our browsers. When I want to see what my Facebook friends are doing I will decide how and when  to do it – not Facebook.  Needless to say I have not done as it suggests.

15 minutes later…

The above screen shot was taken from within Firefox. Neither Chrome nor Opera displayed the message when I logged in to Facebook. IE8, though, makes it quite clear that Facebook wants to make itself your home page when you start up your browser:

I did wonder why the Firefox message is not so explicit. I initially thought that it might be an add-on, but dragging something to your home button is, obviously, going to make it your home page. I have a sacrificial laptop in the corner of the office; I shall experiment tomorrow morning unless someone alerts me before then about dire, irreversible consequences.

UPDATE 5th December 2010 7.17 am:  (Yes, I know I shouldn’t be awake at such an ungodly hour on a Sunday- blame the cat!).  Just tested the Facebook home page button and it does seem to just make your Facebook page your  browser’s home page. It is easily undone. An interesting move, though, by Facebook to encourage users to go straight to Facebook when they wake up. Don’t many of them do that anyway?