How Not to Market: Imitate Microsoft.

Gary North

June 17, 2011

My article on the utter incompetence of the programmers and beta-testers at Opera is here. //www.garynorth.com/public/8136.cfm

Now, let's take a look at Microsoft Internet Explorer 9. It is marketed with the same degree of incompetence as Opera is.

This is what I call the competition of techies. They race against each other to get things utterly useless for users. It is a matter of pride.

Say that you want to download Internet Explorer 9. Here are the instructions.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/how-do-i-install-or-uninstall-internet-explorer-9

So, you click Download. Do you get a pop-up box that offers the choice of Run? Not if you use Mozilla's Firefox. You get this:

If Microsoft expects to lure people from Firefox, the instructions must deal with how to do this. No one at Microsoft has figured this out.

It gets worse. I tried to download the latest version. The program will not install.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/downloads/ie-9/worldwide-languages

I see. I am trying to download the latest version, but the installation software recognizes a 3-month old version as a newer version.

Hello? Is anybody home?

Are techies functionally incompetent? Outside of coding, yes. Are high-tech managers incompetent? Yes. Do these firms use beta-testers? Not well. Does anyone care at these firms? Not enough to see if their instructions work.

These people are essential in our lives. They don't respect us. We don't trust them. Why should we?