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Internet Explorer 7â€™s $250,000 sweepstake

Well this is one way to keep market share if you have a quarter of a million dollars for a marketing budget. Starting from today, Microsoft is hosting a two month promotion, “The IE7 Shop with More Confidence Sweepstakes” in partnership with PayPal to give 25 lucky users each $10,000 to spend via PayPal.

Sure they could have put that money back into the development of Internet Explorer to make it a more competitive web browser, but that wouldn’t be as fun would it?

To enter, it is suggested you first watch a ridiculously boring Flash animation before being redirected to the entry page (or just go straight to it), then complete an entry form on the promotion website. However as the name suggests, it is a promotion for Internet Explorer 7 so it makes sense you will need to use it to access the page. If you try to access the page from other browsers, it will first ask you to download and install IE7. Fortunately for Firefox users like myself, IETab gives the best of both worlds in situations like this. Sorry, but I feel even more confident shopping with Firefox. The sweepstake ends on January 31, 2008.

Sometimes I wished Australia could just become the 51st state of the United States just so I can participate in all these sweepstakes. And for a while under the Howard government, that didn’t seem too far off either.