Microsoft: Browsers for Food

It’s well known that Microsoft’s (MSFT) ten year old Internet Explorer 6 is still widely used by late (late, late) adopters and those that are held at the mercy of lethargic Corporate IT departments.

Until now, Microsoft hasn’t really prioritized encouraging users to upgrade. Unlike Mozilla’s Firefox or Apple’s Safari, Microsoft does not intrude upon users with requests to upgrade to a newer version of the browser. Hence, loads of users continue using a decades old piece of technology.

So instead of forcing an upgrade, Microsoft has done the next best thing; they have launched an advertising campaign at “browserforthebetter.com”. For every upgrade to 8 from 6 they will donate 8 meals to “Feeding America,” one of the nation’s largest hunger-relief charities.

Traffic thus far seems limited, but this could be an interesting episode of human behavior to keep track of. If compassion and general avoidance of pain cannot cause current IE6 users to make a switch, then all hope short of direct government stimulus (browsers for cash?) is probably lost.

Comments

[doodoo]

If you change to a new browser do you lose anything like stock portfolios or stuff like that.Just what happens when you change browsers.I have had foxfire on my computer 2or 3 times and went in and had it deleted because I never knew how it got on.I'm sure that I added it in doing something but was unaware it would stick around after whatever I was doing was over.I just want MSFT as much as I can.MSFT stockholder and am not going to use anything else unless I own their stock.Same with search.I use BING and MSN for everything and am very happy with them.

2009 Oct 20 06:37 PM