Microsoft launched a campaign that promises to provide 8 meals to starving Americans for every time someone downloads their new browser, Internet Explorer 8. Sounds great, on the face of things. So how much is that exactly? $1.15. This is in America, right? Let’s do the math here. They donate the money to Feed America, which commits to spend 98% of that money on actually feeding people. Then we divide the remainder by 8. That’s simply amazing. They can feed a person one meal for $0.14. What in the world are the rest of us doing wrong. I’m a pretty frugal person, raised well by my German mother, and I can’t even come close to that. I’m pretty sure even my Grandma couldn’t manage that one. The fine print also states that there is a cap of $1 million dollars on the donation they will make. So much for me writing a script that will download IE8 every 5 minutes…

Regardless, let’s say that $1.15 does equate to providing 8 meals. They’re using charitable giving to try and get people to upgrade their browser. It’s apparently not enough to just be a better browser, they have to try and bribe people with the promise of giving money to charity to get their product to be downloaded.  And as I already mentioned, if they get too many downloads, they’ll just cap it at $1 million, so it could end up being fifty cents per download, or 10, or 1… Bleh, I’m disgusted, Microsoft, disgusted.

At any rate, go download it anyway, and make sure you do it through www.browserforthebetter.com (otherwise, it doesn’t count). Not because Microsoft is being so generous, but to at least make them pay the $1 million dollars to charity. I’d recommend deleting the file after you download it also, then go download a real browser, like Firefox, Chrome, or Opera.