Oh, this is so ripe for satire I really can’t believe Microsoft didn’t see it coming. Or, perhaps they did and just ran with it anyway, for funsies. It appears Microsoft’s Australian website is encouraging people to switch to IE8 by offering an online treasure hunt, where a series of clues will lead you to a site identifying the location of the $10k (AU$ presumably), which can only be viewed with IE8. They gleefully point out:
“But you’ll never find it with old Firefox. So get rid of it, or get lost.”
So, let’s stack up the issues here:
- Microsoft has resorted to offering a monetary incentive to encourage people to use its free browser. Is that an admission that based on just the merits of the product itself, IE8 probably wouldn’t be the user’s first choice? I’d guess that people who actually choose their browser (rather than accepting what they get preinstalled) are not that likely to pick IE8.
- ‘old’ Firefox? Last I checked, IE predated Firefox by some years, and the latter has a new version coming out in mere weeks. Resorting to empty name-calling now? Dear me.
- Websites that only work in IE? Wow, welcome back to 1999 guys. ActiveX, Outlook Express bindings – ah, the memories. The horrible, eye-watering memories.
A Mozilla dev has already fired back a response, but really I don’t think it needed one. I think the fact that this promotion exists at all, and the tone which it takes, speaks volumes about how much the browser landscape has changed in recent years.
June 18th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
It not only Firefox. When I go to the site it says
“You will never find it using tarnished Chrome. So get rid of it, or get lost.”
I immediately got rid of the foul browser tab.
At the bottom of the page it says:
“Tell your friends. Its not as stupid as it sounds …”
Oh how wrong they are
June 18th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
And for completeness, viewing the page with Safari says: “But you’ll never find it using boring Safari”. Right.
They didn’t even bother making one for Opera, it shows a ‘Page Not Found’ error. That’s probably the most insulting of them all![Edit] Actually, now it shows a page, but just displays a generic “But you’ll never find it using that browser.”. Ouch.
Maybe they thought throwing in these little jibes for their main competitors was toungue-in-cheek amusing, but it just comes off as childish. They should have just gone with “Ur browzr suxxor, IE8 FTW!!” and have done with it.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
My suggestion? Don’t get rid of your (supposedly) ugly browser and just install IE8. Win the $10M. Uninstall IE8 before your Windows gets sick of it, and you’re done. I’m sure that site doesn’t prevent you from doing this XD
Okay. That’s in Australia, where IE is still bundled with Windows. Now, what will they do here in Europe after the recent news?
June 18th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Welcome to Microsoft® Internet™.
It’s rather silly that the Big Professional Corporation is being more childish now than the anarchistic open-source pirate club has ever been. How attitudes can change…
June 18th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Why does it not surprise me that this comes from the same company wich has a dancing ape as its CEO?
June 18th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
I would laugh to death if someone finds the treasure browsing with Opera using MSIE emulation mode (or anything similar for the other browsers)
I just tried, but it says I won’t get it with MSIE 6.0
From the rules:
A) You have to be australian
B) The winner will receive $AUD10,000, to be paid to the competition winner by cheque.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Actually, you only need a browser that sends the right user agent.
I’ve got the firefox user agent extension. Added a new entry for IE8, switched to it, and refreshed. The page is quite happy now and it is willing to let me see the rest of the content; without ie8.
for the record, here are the settings i’m using:
Description: Internet Explorer 8 (Windows Vista)
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0)
App Name: Microsoft Internet Explorer
App Version: 5.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0)
Platform: Win32
I’m still with xp and ie6, by the way…
June 19th, 2009 at 1:25 am
With 10’000$ they will make a big buzz worth millions in advertisement… and with this post you just participated in promoting IE8!
I wouldn’t call it stupid but marketing. Something which the Linux guys are not very good at.
If there are really features/website that can’t be supported by FireFox, then Mozilla should offer a price for the fastest submitted patch that makes it “IE8″ compliant.
June 19th, 2009 at 7:34 am
ten grand is buried here = ten grand times IE was buried here.
June 19th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Unfortunately I’m not in Australia so I can’t enter anyway (for the money, not the use of IE).
Firefox is my first choice of browser and, since I’m running Ubuntu, I can’t get IE at all (oh dear, what a pity, never mind). But on the plus side, at least Micro$oft is helping to start getting rid of IE6 that is still plaguing the net.
The UserAgent extension works with the site, now all someone needs to do is create a web page that only works with FFox, how many extensions are there for InfernalExploder?
So avoid IE8, download FFox, and install the UserAgent add-on
June 19th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
They don’t need to do this … at this point IE8 is actually better than Firefox.
June 19th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
“Okay. That’s in Australia, where IE is still bundled with Windows. Now, what will they do here in Europe after the recent news?”
Yeah, well, they haven’t learned anything from the Windows N debacle, have they ?
June 19th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Some good responses are popping up around the internet now. This is one of the better ones that I have found so far… http://www.tengrandburiedhere.com/winner.html
June 19th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
As Kencho pointed out, people have turned to antitrust laws to stop Microsoft from distributing their browser with the OS by default. Steve says they shouldn’t be offering money as incentive to use it, but other people play dirty and say “Microsoft is too successful and influential in the marketplace, its unfair they pack the browser in with their OS”. If IE8 sucked so badly this wouldn’t be an issue, now would it?
June 19th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
@warmi: IE8 looks better than previous versions, but I’m unlikely to use it for the same reason I don’t use Chrome, or Safari, or Opera – all my browser extensions are in Firefox, and I can’t live without them. So the fact that Chrome is faster, and Safari has some clever tricks doesn’t woo me away from it. I see little in IE8 that will either. This post was less about the substance of IE8 and more about the lengths MS Australia is going to ‘sell’ it to people.
@KungFooMasta: the European browser bundling issue *did* make sense, once – specifically at the time people still thought there was a business model in selling browser software. Of course now it’s all irrelevant – MS killed off Netscape a decade ago, and everyone has moved on; it would only have mattered had they done something about it then. Now, the landscape is completely different – the EU is still arguing over a war that ended years ago for some reason. But, maybe it just means PC distributors will put a couple of browser options on a PC as standard, which can’t be a bad thing.
June 20th, 2009 at 7:03 am
“. But, maybe it just means PC distributors will put a couple of browser options on a PC as standard, which can’t be a bad thing.”
Absolutely.
I think it is insane to insist that MS ships their OS without any browser but by the same token, they(MS) should be prevented from placing any restrictions on OEM vendors in terms of what other software they are allowed to preinstall on their PCs ( within reason of course, after all MS has a right to defend integrity of their flagship product)
June 20th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Yeah – I don’t for a minute expect that any PCs will be shipped without a browser, that would be crazy. OEMs will install it, and TBH they’ll probably put IE8 on there a lot of time I expect (so, big change
). However, if they have a choice then it means they might choose to install Firefox, or Chrome if Google pays them (the latter is more likely I would expect). I doubt Apple will care enough to pay people to put Safari on Windows machines, but I might be wrong.
All that really matters is that if there’s a mixture of browsers on off-the-shelf PCs, there’s a better chance we’ll avoid repeating the stupid IE-only website phenomenon we experienced a while ago. Although other factors like a growing mobile user base (particularly iPhone and other non-Windows smart phones) are making that pretty unlikely anyway. The days of the desktop (and therefore Windows) being the one and only standard people aim for is rapidly disappearing, something that must be worrying for Microsoft, since it’s been the ace in their pack for two decades. The EU didn’t do that, changing customer demands did.
June 21st, 2009 at 11:27 am
Damn, I was hoping the $10000 was actually buried in australia somewhere and the clues would be gps coords or landmark hints.
What’s wrong with a company offering a prize for using their product? Apple just recently gave away a $10000 gift card (and a macbook pro, time capsule and ipod touch) where a condition was that you use itunes, but I don’t see people whining about it.
Mozilla is right now running a contest where you can win a macbook pro if you develop the best firefox addon. I can’t write a firefox addon without having firefox installed. How is this different from an MS contest which requires IE8?
Opera had a contest in 2007 where you had to photograph your monitor running opera and opera mini side by side. I can’t do that without installing them. How is that different from an MS contest which requires IE8?
Oh yeah, MS is evil and apple/mozilla/opera can do no wrong.
(Just to clarify, I hate IE, think IE only websites should be banned and couldn’t live without Firefox Portable. Some people just get way too worked up over a web browser though)
Anyway… anyone know of a real life buried treasure hunt in australia? I’m in the mood for one.
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:19 pm
@Kojack: I think the difference with the Firefox marketing thing is that it’s a competition, where you have to actually have to produce something (an extension). Of course that’s only going to work in Firefox.
I agree the Opera compo is the same kind of thing though. But – Opera are the underdogs, they need viral marketing. IE is supposedly the market leader – running a compo like this shows that they’re nervous about waning market share. I also thought it incredibly ironic that MS would be creating IE-only websites deliberately for this purpose, something that blighted the Internet in years gone by as an unpleasant result of MS dominance – it’s like they’re trying to recreate past ‘glory days’. I imagine MS sitting on the porch puffing on a pipe: “I remember when people used ActiveX, and only tested their web applications on IE5. Ah, those were the days….”
Or, I’m reading too much into it.
I’m not saying MS is evil, or that the others are paragons (or even that IE8 is worse or better than them) – it just struck me as highly amusing that an attempt at a chest-beating campaign actually just highlights how the browser landscape has changed (for the better, IMO) in recent years, and not in IE’s favour.