Udo's Techblog

I'm not a Microsoft hater, on the contrary. Though I'm a Mac user, I have profound respect for the accomplishments of Microsoft's developers and other staff. However, it also seems obvious to me that the blazing incompetence, arrogance and hostility of MS' management and marketing departments make it very hard to maintain a certain level of goodwill and objectivity towards the company I still consider one of the core innovators on this planet.

Case in point, the IE 8 marketing campaign which does away with the subtle grassroots technique of the Bing marketing effort, in favor of a more "direct" approach. Here's the deal: ditch your current browser and get the chance to win $10,000. And it's every bit as sleazy and stupid as it sounds, but hey, I'm giving you free buzz anyway, Microsoft Australia (not that you needed it).

The boilerplate text probably speaks for itself: "Tell your friends. It's not as stupid as it sounds. With all the stuff you have on, you won't be able to keep an eye out for all the clues 24/7. So team up with your friends to catch all the clues on Twitter. Share the clues and share the big prize."

I'm not even annoyed that it tells me "We've buried $10,000 somewhere on the Internet and if you're the first one to find it, you get to keep it. But you'll never find it using old Firefox. So get rid of it, or get lost." where I'm apparently prompted to wipe OS X from my machine just to have an infinitesimal chance of winning that money - but only if I was an Australian citizen who'd have to dedicate the next two weeks to hunting down ridiculous clues while resisting the increasing temptation to kill myself.

No, what really gets me is that the team who put out the slowest, most horrible browser on earth considers it a greater priority to run a hostile and no doubt stupidly costly campaign, instead of fixing the abomination that is the Internet Explorer's CSS code or, say, rewriting the slowest and most awkward ECMA implementation known to humankind.

Those ten grand were buried there, indeed.