Slog
News & ArtsWednesday, June 17, 2009
Tech Microsoft Bribing People to Use IE8
Posted by Anthony Hecht on Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 4:24 PM
Microsoft Australia is running a promotion for IE8 wherein you follow some clues sent via Twitter, and then visit certain sites to track down $10,000. The prize is on a webpage that "only Internet Explorer 8 can view," though, so the promotion site hilariously makes fun of the browser you're visiting with and encourages you to download IE8 instead.
"You'll never find it using boring Safari. (So get rid of it, or get lost.)"
Where to begin?
First, IE's incompatibility with other browsers is the bane of my and many others' existence, so it's a bit rich for them to act like it's some kind of feature. "Only IE8 can see these valuable web pages!" Fuck you.
Also, we can change our User-Agent string to mimic IE8, because we have advanced browsers. Ppbbbllttttt.
Ultimately, though, it's just lame and unfunny, like the Zune, or Bing. Stop trying to be funny and hip, Microsoft. It's just sad. Accept that you are a business software company, and then maybe focus on making good business software.
Oh, and the website in that ad - tengrandisburiedhere.com? It doesn't work.
click image for larger version
2
"Tell your friends, it's not as stupid as it sounds."
If your ad needs that statement, it may be time to rethink that ad.
If your ad needs that statement, it may be time to rethink that ad.
3
Sorry, I'm busy installing Firefox 3.5 with Privacy Guard that removes all History traces of my web browsing.
What is this IE 8 of which you speak?
What is this IE 8 of which you speak?
5
Um, this is just a basic marketing tool. Lots of companies do shit like this - if Yahoo wanted to pimp their page with a $10,000 prize thingee, they wouldn't hide the clues on google.com, they would keep you on their own platforms. I know it's hipster law that you have to hate Microsoft because all other technology was sent down from on high by the angels, but it really is okay if they...you know, act like a business and try to get you to use their stuff.
6
@5 - Oh please. Microsoft had a monopoly on the browser business for years, and they responded by literally disbanding the IE group, doing no development for years. Now they're losing market share fast and it's accelerating, so they're resorting to cheesy bribes to get people to use their now somewhat less-crappy product.
Oh, and this is nothing like putting a contest on a website that you own versus your competition's site. Browsers are tools for accessing the Internet, and they should be agnostic as to what content they're accessing. Their use of browser sniffing in this case is a gimmick, sure, but it's still stupid and lame.
Oh, and this is nothing like putting a contest on a website that you own versus your competition's site. Browsers are tools for accessing the Internet, and they should be agnostic as to what content they're accessing. Their use of browser sniffing in this case is a gimmick, sure, but it's still stupid and lame.
7
Whether The Stranger is guilty of reflexive hipster dismissals is hardly up for debate.
What is a daily concern is the pain that Microsoft has inflicted and _continues_ to inflict on the web community. Their policy of "embrace and extend" has done more to hold back web development than ... well, anything.
And they're not only paying for it in IE's market share. Silverlight is technically superior to Adobe's Flash, but nobody in their right mind would trust Microsoft with owning a web-standard technology.
They doomed themselves.
What is a daily concern is the pain that Microsoft has inflicted and _continues_ to inflict on the web community. Their policy of "embrace and extend" has done more to hold back web development than ... well, anything.
And they're not only paying for it in IE's market share. Silverlight is technically superior to Adobe's Flash, but nobody in their right mind would trust Microsoft with owning a web-standard technology.
They doomed themselves.
8
What, exactly, is wrong with Zune? The desktop software kicks the shit out of iTunes and the hardware is a better value...
9
Anthony, I've gotta agree with #5. They'll do whatever it takes to keep the dollars coming in, and if that means stupid contests like this, well, that's just garden-variety capitalism.
10
What's wrong with the Zune is that when Microsoft buys booths for it, they hide the "M"-word.
What's wrong with the Zune is that Microsoft fucked over everyone who bought into "Plays for Sure". Just cut them dead - end users, "channel partners", device makers - all of them.
What's wrong with Zune is what's wrong with Silverlight is what's wrong with Microsoft's security initiative - people just don't trust Microsoft.
How much SPAM have I received today from hacked MS boxes? What technology company gave us the "bot-net"?
And don't try to make this an Apple / MS thing. Microsoft has abandoned the image of the technology leader all on its own.
Hello, Vista?
Meanwhile Opera just released a beta of a broswer that's also a web-server and Google developed the V8 Java engine and blah, blah, blah.
Microsoft got too large, too fat and too lazy.
A guy from MARKETING is running a technology company.
Whatever.
What's wrong with the Zune is that Microsoft fucked over everyone who bought into "Plays for Sure". Just cut them dead - end users, "channel partners", device makers - all of them.
What's wrong with Zune is what's wrong with Silverlight is what's wrong with Microsoft's security initiative - people just don't trust Microsoft.
How much SPAM have I received today from hacked MS boxes? What technology company gave us the "bot-net"?
And don't try to make this an Apple / MS thing. Microsoft has abandoned the image of the technology leader all on its own.
Hello, Vista?
Meanwhile Opera just released a beta of a broswer that's also a web-server and Google developed the V8 Java engine and blah, blah, blah.
Microsoft got too large, too fat and too lazy.
A guy from MARKETING is running a technology company.
Whatever.
11
I wouldn't use IE 8 if it guaranteed me $10k. Those idiots and their affirmative action can kiss my ass. Microsoft has sucked ass ever since it went liberal. At least Apple knows to keep that shit in the commercials, not the workplace.
13
I've spent the past three days at the Internet Retailer Convention and Expo in Boston. Bing had a 20x20 booth there. The word Microsoft did not appear once in the booth. Anywhere.
Lame and pathetic.
Lame and pathetic.
16
#12 HAW HAW!! That's a real knee-slapper! Now go actually use Bing and see that it kind of kicks ass. I love the Stranger, and the Slog, but sometimes you people leap to conclusions about shit you know nothing about.
Looking forward to 2015, when you very same ultra-cool hipsters are dumping on Big Boring Google because they will have "jumped the shark" (code for: Became too big to be cool).
Looking forward to 2015, when you very same ultra-cool hipsters are dumping on Big Boring Google because they will have "jumped the shark" (code for: Became too big to be cool).
17
LOL.
"First, IE's incompatibility with other browsers is the bane of my and many others' existence,"
IE *is* a browser. What the crap are you talking about? Do you know what you're talking about? Don't. Think. So.
"First, IE's incompatibility with other browsers is the bane of my and many others' existence,"
IE *is* a browser. What the crap are you talking about? Do you know what you're talking about? Don't. Think. So.
18
What he's talking about, moon, is that Microsoft doesn't do standards. Their web browser BREAKS standards. Which makes it very difficult for people who provide web pages to the world to keep up with their rogue bullshit ways of doing things.
Microsoft even shits on their friends. We have web applications where I work that REQUIRE IE7 but don't work at all on IE8 -- the same IE8 that our users had forced upon them, and didn't know how to stop, because according to Microsoft, IE8 is just another security update, like all the others, about 80 MB a week's worth. Our users aren't very sophisticated, but you shouldn't have to be sophisticated to keep your computer from stopping working in the middle of the day for no reason.
Microsoft even shits on their friends. We have web applications where I work that REQUIRE IE7 but don't work at all on IE8 -- the same IE8 that our users had forced upon them, and didn't know how to stop, because according to Microsoft, IE8 is just another security update, like all the others, about 80 MB a week's worth. Our users aren't very sophisticated, but you shouldn't have to be sophisticated to keep your computer from stopping working in the middle of the day for no reason.
19
Microsoft's Bing is really really good, which is frankly surprising considering the crap that was Windows Live Search. It also has a much better name.
And Google should just accept that they made a revolutionary search engine in the late 90s and stick to that. Yahoo! learned that lesson the hard way.
I have no idea what this sentence means.
Accept that you are a business software company, and then maybe focus on making good business software.
And Google should just accept that they made a revolutionary search engine in the late 90s and stick to that. Yahoo! learned that lesson the hard way.
First, IE's incompatibility with other browsers is the bane of my and many others' existence
I have no idea what this sentence means.
21
Someone else already explained what that means, donolectic. And frankly you not understanding it in the first place gives away how little you actually know what you are talking about. It's not that hard to comprehend, especially if you had to deal with IE for any period of time. Sometimes people's complaints and hatred for a product does not derive from "hipster sensationalism"- sometimes it's completely merited based off the problems and history of problems with the product.
22
Microsoft used to be innovators and now they're just imitators sort of like JCPenney and their Plain Pocket jeans or The Fox polo shirts.
23
All of my microsoft ire is a result of Outlook 2003. What a fucking piece of shit. Whoever came up with that contacts system needs to die in a fire, etc.
I got a friend that works there and I never stop giving him shit for it. And he accepts it because he knows from the inside how retarded that company is. He's putting in his 2 week notice soon.
I got a friend that works there and I never stop giving him shit for it. And he accepts it because he knows from the inside how retarded that company is. He's putting in his 2 week notice soon.
24
All of my microsoft ire is a result of Outlook 2003. What a fucking piece of shit. Whoever came up with that contacts system needs to die in a fire, etc.
I got a friend that works there and I never stop giving him shit for it. And he accepts it because he knows from the inside how retarded that company is. He's putting in his 2 week notice soon.
I got a friend that works there and I never stop giving him shit for it. And he accepts it because he knows from the inside how retarded that company is. He's putting in his 2 week notice soon.
25
All of my microsoft ire is a result of Outlook 2003. What a fucking piece of shit. Whoever came up with that contacts system needs to die in a fire, etc.
I got a friend that works there and I never stop giving him shit for it. And he accepts it because he knows from the inside how retarded that company is. He's putting in his 2 week notice soon.
I got a friend that works there and I never stop giving him shit for it. And he accepts it because he knows from the inside how retarded that company is. He's putting in his 2 week notice soon.
29
As I used to tell customers during the "Browser Wars" of the mid 90's: "It's not the glasses you wear, it's the books you read." This focus on what browser you use is so silly, especially when they are all free. It's all about content - always has been and always will be.
Do you really care which publisher prints your favourite book, or which record company puts out an album from your favourite band? Of course not.
Now, it is agreed that browsers that do not load certain pages because of their technical content are lame. The lesson, as always, is to use the least amount of techinical fanciness as possible. There are just as many web-based apps that fail in various Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc. versions as do with IE versions. In almost every case, you can find that those apps were programmed with a certain browser in mind. It is foolish to expect an application that was written with 2-3 year old technology to stay current.
Funny side note: When I worked for MS tech support in the mid 90's, we were tasked with supporting the 'new' IE4. Windows NT shipped with IE2, which was pretty good for its time. IE2 could not load the web page used to download IE4! You had to install Netscape, then use that to install IE4. Since that time, I have found that Microsoft is the Group Think capital of the world, and silly things like this keep coming up. Zune, Bing and Office 07 just confirm this.
Do you really care which publisher prints your favourite book, or which record company puts out an album from your favourite band? Of course not.
Now, it is agreed that browsers that do not load certain pages because of their technical content are lame. The lesson, as always, is to use the least amount of techinical fanciness as possible. There are just as many web-based apps that fail in various Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc. versions as do with IE versions. In almost every case, you can find that those apps were programmed with a certain browser in mind. It is foolish to expect an application that was written with 2-3 year old technology to stay current.
Funny side note: When I worked for MS tech support in the mid 90's, we were tasked with supporting the 'new' IE4. Windows NT shipped with IE2, which was pretty good for its time. IE2 could not load the web page used to download IE4! You had to install Netscape, then use that to install IE4. Since that time, I have found that Microsoft is the Group Think capital of the world, and silly things like this keep coming up. Zune, Bing and Office 07 just confirm this.
31
@29: Sir Vic, the best answer is to write valid HTML rather than relying on bugs in various browsers. As for "here are just as many web-based apps that fail in various Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc. versions as do with IE versions" I don't buy it unless those others are mostly failing because misguided Web developers just banged away on a page until it looked right in IE -- undoubtedly relying upon IE's non-standard behavior -- instead of writing good, clean, standards-based code.
33
@29 said: "There are just as many web-based apps that fail in various Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc. versions as do with IE versions."
This is simply untrue. If you're talking about very old versions of these browsers, then sure - they were created before the technologies that power many modern web apps existed. If you try to run GMail in Firefox 1, you're probably going to have bad results, but even the most recent versions of IE fail to implement standards that have been around for many years. It's getting better, but it's still years behind every other browser you listed.
This is simply untrue. If you're talking about very old versions of these browsers, then sure - they were created before the technologies that power many modern web apps existed. If you try to run GMail in Firefox 1, you're probably going to have bad results, but even the most recent versions of IE fail to implement standards that have been around for many years. It's getting better, but it's still years behind every other browser you listed.
34
For anyone who isn't a web designer, here's the standard process for designing a webpage:
Design to web standards, looks great in Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.
Check out page in Explorer, see that it's fucked up beyond belief.
Smash head against desk and curse Microsoft's arrogance and incompetence for ignoring set web standards EVERYONE ELSE adheres to.
Spend twice as much time to fix page in IE browser by using work arounds and flaws in the browser, resulting in massive code bloat.
Design to web standards, looks great in Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.
Check out page in Explorer, see that it's fucked up beyond belief.
Smash head against desk and curse Microsoft's arrogance and incompetence for ignoring set web standards EVERYONE ELSE adheres to.
Spend twice as much time to fix page in IE browser by using work arounds and flaws in the browser, resulting in massive code bloat.
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