Microsoft has a campaign in Australia to give away $10,000 that it has buried “somewhere on the Internet.” But the catch is that in order to find this money, you need to be using IE8. If you don’t have IE8 you get this rather rude message: “But you’ll never find it using that browser. So get rid of it, or get lost.”

Finally, at the bottom of the campaign page it reads, “Tell your friends. It’s not as stupid as it sounds.” At least they acknowledge that it sounds stupid.

Actually though, it’s not that stupid, it’s just kind of desperate. If Microsoft really wants to get people to use IE8 it should rely less on tacky gimmicks and more on making a great product. If you do that, the users will follow — and you won’t even have to pay them.

From Techcrunch; excerpts, edited by TheFreeWindows

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