Microsoft hopes charity push will spur IE downloads
Artists put the finishing touches on a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge constructed from soup cans. The stunt was aimed at drawing awareness to Microsoft's Browser for the Better campaign, in which the software maker is donating to a food bank for each download of Internet Explorer 8.
(Credit: Microsoft)Although Microsoft is pulling Internet Explorer 8 out of Windows 7 in Europe, the software maker is also busy in the U.S. trying to get folks to download its latest browser.
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One piece of the effort is a charity push in which Microsoft will donate meals to a food bank for each person that downloads IE 8 via a special "Browser for the Better" Web site. Technically, the company is donating $1.15 per completed download, up to a maximum of $1 million.
Although Microsoft is also pushing out Internet Explorer 8 over Windows Update and including a version of it with Windows 7 (except in Europe), the company is trying to build awareness of the latest version and spur active usage.
The software maker has seen its browser share--which once topped 90 percent--continue to decline, with Mozilla's Firefox having gained considerable ground. The company also faces competition from Apple, Google and others in the browser arena.
As of last month, Internet Explorer's global market share stood at 65.5 percent, according to Net Applications, compared with 22.5 percent for Firefox, 8.4 percent for Safari, and 1.8 percent for Google's Chrome.
To draw attention to the food donation effort, the company staged events in San Francisco and New York this week. In San Francisco, the company had an artist build a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge out of soup cans. I checked it out and did a short video interview with Microsoft's Pete LaPage about the effort.
The company is also running a series of online ads trying to highlight some of the browser's features, such as its support for "accelerators" that aim to make it quicker to get to tasks like mapping and blogging.
So what do you think, is the promise of Microsoft donating money enough to make you download IE 8? And what about the ads, do they make you hungry for more or just lose your lunch?
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
And for a monopoly to do this, it's just an altruistic form of "tying." Now they are tying a charity gift to an unrelated download of a product. Both are free to the consumer, but still they are not related to one another, and monopolies are supposed to avoid bundling unrelated products (charity donation + browser, for example).
They are doing it this way, just as they "settled" the state lawsuits via charity for schools (which had the effect of increasing the monopoly by crowding out competition), to create goodwill while exploiting a monopoly.
Why don't you idiots at least do some research before you open your mouths and spew out even more mindless anti-Microsoft rubbish eh?
Of course, how much charity a recipient gets is proportional to how many copies of Windows and MS Office that the recipient's government buys... just ask Mexico, where a huge 'donation' to a charity run by Fox' wife helped lubricate sales of Windows to Mexico's government...
You really ought to be ashamed of yourself. The Gates Foundation has done more in the last 5+ years for people in absolutely desperate states of poverty and disease than any other private charitable organization in the world.
Bill Gates approaches charity work with a clarity of thought and vision that actually gives me hope that we might actually see some real results for a change. Do some reading before you criticize an organization that nothing but good. Try starting here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Alliance_for_Vaccines_and_Immunization
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/06.14/99-gates.html
(Gate's harvard commencement speech - in which you'll see how clear his vision is)
If you blindly hate MS and want to say anything negative that comes to your mind, thats fine (makes you look silly, but ok, whatever). When it comes to the Gates Foundation, you should pause for a second and educate yourself before commenting on nonsense.
Huh?
Is that why Bill Gates has given a heck of a lot more money to Africa, than to any other continent outside this country, even tho Africans buy vastly LESS software from Microsoft than any other continent?
Dude, not only are you ignorant, you are stupid as well to boot.
The trouble with the internet is, even the fools and the low lives of the world are given free reign to display their ignorance every day.
The first few posts were a valid question of any corporation who donated in proportion to customers purchases. it would be one thing if Company Z donated 10 cents for every widget sold no matter how many sell. it's another thing when it's all apparently marketing strategy.
By the way, by giving away a million dollars to charity, the government will give a tax break equal to that amount to Microsoft. They don't lose anything and they gain market share. It would make a lot more sense for everyone who wants to contribute to charity to just write a check for $1.15 and send it to the charity of your choice.
Don't choose a browser because downloading it makes someone else give away some cash, choose it because it's the best browser for your needs. If IE8 is truly the best browser in your opinion, go for it. If Firefox is better to you, go for that. If it's Opera or Safari or Chrome, go for one of those.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum119/69.htm
I hope people won't be so motivated to game the IE downloads with the benefit going to charity rather than the net user.
Oh come on. Of course it's a bribe. Microsoft is far from being the only company to participate in this sort of bribes, but that doesn't make it not a bribe. They are dangling a donation to a food bank in front of us to try to get us to download their browser. That's telling customers "if you don't download our browser, this many families will go hungry..."
At least for things companies sell, like some yogurt companies giving to a breast cancer research effort, they do it to increase sales. That makes sense because they are essentially saying "if we make this much, we will donate a percentage of what we make to the charity.: Microsoft isn't even doing to to sell anything. They're doing it to try to increase their failing market share in the browser market. In other words, they are not making any money off the downloads, yet holding the charity donation hostage to the downloads. Why? There's no monetary justification for it.
Another MS joke.
They keep feeding the kitty.
Can't wait:
"Press release"
Microsoft shatters browser download records! (pays for the title)
Lovely.
Methinks you should familiarize yourself with the concept of 'the fox and his grapes".
And yes MS has always given alot to charity.
Apple (spent more on promotions that they gave charity, then the charity theyve given.
Kinda like the ad more than the charity give away though! "I hate you Mary"
"No, because I refuse to expose my computer to malware, even for charity"
Ah yes, well since you don't feel you want to expose your computer to malware, I assume you never turn your Macintosh on? Quicktime has a wonderful list of security holes and explloits available that do lovely little things like installing keyloggers, bots, etc.
Don't worry though, you're perfectly safe as long as you never, ever, turn a computer on.
You don't use windows. Quit trolling.
Actually, you have abosloutely no idea what the heck you are talking about!
I would doubt if you have even read one single page of our anti-trust laws before in your entire life.
I fail to see how your comment is relevent. Spacydog was simply stating that the source of the aid should not be the primary focus of concern as long as they are helping. Anti-trust law has nothing to do with donating money or goods to charity, companies and individuals do so all the time. Donation does not exempt one from the law nor does it better a company's position in anti-trust suites (of which there none currently pending in the U.S. against Microsoft). The last anti-trust suite that I am aware of, in the U.S. was "United States vs. Microsoft" of which the final decision was reached in 2002.
...so why doesn't Microsoft simply make a big donation, without all the advertising dollars spent on the promotion? You'd think they could maximize the amount they give and let the recipients (and the news media) do all of the publicity...
MS is at least doing *something*
You won't even install the browser (out of your hate for MS) -- when that's all you had to do for MS to make a donation. Worse, you're out there passing negative comments trying to dissuade others from installing it (so trying to prevent other donations from taking place). And then you think, even for a fraction of a second, that you have some kind of moral high ground here?
Microsoft and Microsoft employees have been doing that for DECADES, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to charities without making any noise about it.
How much have YOU ever given to charity yourself?
"You won't even install the browser (out of your hate for MS) -- when that's all you had to do for MS to make a donation. Worse, you're out there passing negative comments trying to dissuade others from installing it (so trying to prevent other donations from taking place). And then you think, even for a fraction of a second, that you have some kind of moral high ground here?"
Microsoft owns you. You fell for their trap.
If Adolph Hitler played the charity card, would you think he was a good guy?
Because The Gates Foundation has already donated several billion dollars and continues to donate more.
"so why doesn't Microsoft simply make a big donation, without all the advertising dollars spent on the promotion?"
Why not do both? Is there something wrong with publicity when it benefits the food banks?
Admit it, you're only upset because this is Microsoft doing it and you're all about the hatred for MSFT. If this was Apple, you'd be all over this citing how wonderful it was, how generous they were, how great they are for doing this. Your comments are really that transparent.
'course, Dunno what I'd do with IE on a Linux box, but hey - let's help them give to charity - it's for a good cause! :)
It's kind of sad that you would think of a way to come up with a way to game the system, exploiting the offer and very likely voiding the entire project.
Why is it you are against this donation method? If this was Apple or Ubuntu doing this, you'd be all smarmy about how great it is.
If it benefits a charity, why si this bad? Why are you against helping food banks?
The problem comes in when you actually look at what you just said. Apple doesn't do this because they have quality software. When they give, it's not for an ulterior motive. Ubuntu gives away everything but official support if you need it. I get better quality software at no charge than I would get from MS for $$$. That means I've saved myself the cash needed to feed myself for another day. They do this for everyone on the planet.
Even if you count the value of Ubuntu as $1 per installation, more has been given away than this promotion will do. That means more people have been able to eat for a day by using Ubuntu than MS is willing to feed off this promotion.
"Ubuntu gives away everything but official support if you need it. I get better quality software at no charge than I would get from MS for $$$. That means I've saved myself the cash needed to feed myself for another day. They do this for everyone on the planet."
Ah, but by that very same token I could also say that I am saving myself the *hours* and *days* of frustration and time lost on trying to self support installations of Ubuntu. All that money and time lost.
See, you can twist it however you want. I'm not sure how you seem to believe Linux and Ubuntu are doing something for charity here... the article isn't even about Linux. You brought it up.
But let's take that $1 per installation to task. How many more dollars in lost time in trying to support the product must be attached as well? Just because Ubuntu isn't charging for the download doesn't mean there isn't a support cost someplace. Make sure you take that number into account as well, otherwise your comparison is lacking.
Then just shut up and do it. If you do your thing and Microsoft does their thing then more money will go to charity. How is that bad? Oh that's right it lessens the "opportunity" for your favorite browser to become more dominant. Once again you put your "needs" above everything else. Oh please save us tm_anon from the beast known as "Microsoft"!
Hey I have an idea: why don't all of the companies competing for browser market share give matching amounts for no apparent reason at all! That sounds like good business to me!
Does Microsoft make a donation if you download without installing?
"Only complete downloads of Windows® Internet Explorer® 8 through browserforthebetter.com from June 8, 2009 through August 8, 2009 qualify for the charitable donation to Feeding America®"
If you were planning to download IE 8 anyway, go ahead and do it. As I don't run any Windows based computers (Nor will I ever) I decided to make a somewhat larger donation to the local food bank.
Everyone wins. By donating directly to the local food bank My donation will have less overhead. Both I and the world are better off because one less copy of a Microsoft product is connected to the internet.
All the fanbois and haters out there would be the first to bash Apple if it had any kind of market share at all. Lets keep in mind that when something is niche like Apple...people tend to root for the very little guy.
No money MS gives can make up for the financial damage their monopoly has caused globally in areas of lock-in, wasted development hours, barriers to market entry, security, etc. This is why their charity is meaningless. How many developing nations does MS bribe to use windows, whose economies could see more growth by embracing open source software? Much open source software can run on older or lower end machines, thereby opening computing up to more people in developing nations. Additionally, the cost to develop on top of open source is much less. But MS doesn't want to let people or governments make the decision for themselves.
How many corporations are going to have to spend millions to significantly re-write their web apps as support for IE 6 goes away? This is why consumers and corporate customers need to demand standards compliance, because if you don't it will come back and bite you in the a**. This is why no one should use IE in any form, until MS gets it right and actually helps developers with tools to port IE specific websites to standards compliance. Otherwise, non-complacent masses keep rewarding this monster. A standards compliant website/document could still be rendered 50, 100, or 1000 years from now (provided we don't destroy ourselves first). An IE specific website cannot easily be.
Disclaimer: Anyone who does not know what embrace and extend means is not qualified to comment on the issues regarding IE and standards compliance. My advice is to brush up on that concept, brush up on standards processes and where they are and aren't most useful. (Hint, if it is data shared on global networks and you might also want it to still be usable more than 2-5 years in the future, then standards are definitely useful.)
Product promotions being used for charity is actually very common. For example:
http://www.apple.com/ipod/red/ (red ipod -- supporting aids)
http://ww5.komen.org/KomenNewsArticle.aspx?id=15822 (pink stuff from Dell -- supporting breast cancer research)
As usual, only when MS is involved is it a bad thing :(
"As usual, only when MS is involved is it a bad thing :("
Correct, although you could also put SCO and the north Korean leader in as well.
Good point. I wonder if the MSFT haters here will now stay consistent in their arguments and condemn Apple for requiring you to buy an iPod before they will donate money to aids research. Unless they do so, then the doublestandard becomes evident.
Well folks? Any takers?
North Korea and SCO huh? Sounds like some kind of corollary to Godwin's Law to me. Guilt by association / character assassination / smear campaign / swift boat attack.
At least try stringing together an argument next time, son.
Come on. people, it's food bank, and for once MS is donating to USA reciepients. Hard to find fault in food bank donating, it's a good cause. Besides, have things really gotten so bad for IE that there wouldn't have been 870,000 downloads anyway? Maybe so, I don't know, nonetheless, I'd be surprised if they see that many DLs with or without the campaign, if that's the case, can't we just stop our hating on IE and Gates and Windows and the rest long enough to simply appreciate the fact someone is contributing $1M USD to supply meals for the less fortunate and hungry, and leave it at that.
We will pay if you use our browser and our search engine.
What about them paying us to use Vista?
So, play the charity card. Yes there is cost, but it is a cheap way to buy a good reputation.
Although charitable acts are great, it doesn't gloss over the injustice of Microsoft practices against the consumer. The EU still need to chastise this company.
If Adolph Hitler had survived and then became charitable, it wouldn't have negated what he had done previously. An extreme example yes, but the point is clear.
Even evil will engage in good if it furthers their goals.
But Google said itself, "Do no evil..." :)
Google vs Microsoft.
A bit like Microsoft vs IBM 20 years ago.
Do starving kids in Africa care about open source software or do they want a meal on their plate?
Are you forgetting that Bill Gates has also donated billions of dollars of his own money?
Are you forgetting that Bill Gates is no longer the head of Microsoft? According to all your comments on this site so far, yes you are.
And yes, starving kids in Africa want food, the US has provided plenty of aid to Africa and Linux was the software of choice for the OLPC project for how long? Those laptops were given to the children to help them learn and become more than just another starving African child.
Linux has still done more good, even in the case you're trying to bring up. You try to narrow the focus to the plate when there's a huge world surrounding it.
Just imagine, you have an empty plate now but you do have a laptop which can connect to the internet. That means you can now look up edible vegetation, ways to trap animals, ways to get clean water and how to work a field so that crops will grow. You have an empty plate now but not for too long if you have the power to educate yourself.
Linux helped to make that possible.
The word evil should only be used to individuals that kill, sexually abuse, or enslave others.
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Hmmm, M$ is an "individual" corporation. Look up WGA, they have enslaved their own customers. By your own definition then, M$ is pure unadulterated evil. Equal to Satan himself type of evil. Rotten to the core evil.
This goodwill gesture doesn't wipe the evil away and HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH BILL GATES HIMSELF.
Now watch the slaves trip over themselves to continue to defend their masters.
"Do starving kids in Africa care about open source software or do they want a meal on their plate?"
I don't know.. some of those linux distro CD's look pretty tasty. Eat enough of them and you won't have to worry about hunger anymore. :)
Thanks for setting the record straight...on how seriously you are messed up in the head.
Someone was sleeping during the very little bit of school they went to.
It was an extreme example (as mentioned) to show a point. Once the point was understood, it was up to the reader to exercise wisdom regarding that point.
It wasn't Hitler = Gates.
Sounds like you are the one who needs schooling. You also didn't reply to the post, but made a separate post.
So a bit of schooling in IT and the Web wouldn't hurt either.
I think that's what you were going for.
All hail Linux, Apple, open source!
They also pay to use their search engine.
What would b e really helpful would be for them to pay those who use Vista.
Please elaborate your view at length with examples. Let's get this out into the open.
Or is this just your opinion? That's fine too, but I'd like to know which it is.
I have lost count of the licenses I own.
But because of deals with OEMs I and all other consumers have to pay the Microsoft tax.
It's is a rip off, but I have to hand it to Gates regarding getting away with this. It takes a clever man who can con the world.
When I bought my Dell, I had a choice of Linux or Windows. It wasn't forced on me at all.
When I bought my Asus system board for my home built machine, I wasn't forced to buy Windows.
Looks like your argument just derailed.
Now... let's see you try that same line with Apple? That is one place where you truly have no choice.
- by shellcodes_coder June 12, 2009 7:33 PM PDT
- am sure Microsoft have donated more money than CrApple have in their bank till now. Even Bill Gates has more money than CrApple have in their account.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- by blafouille June 12, 2009 8:14 PM PDT
- Tax payer are giving a way more than B Gates even to big company when they collapse...
- Like this
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