It would seem that Microsoft has backed down on the restrictions in their $10,000 treasure hunt, lifting the limitation that Internet Explorer 8 has to be used, and removing some of the contentious wording used on the site.

I do have to wonder though: in a corporation of Microsoft’s size, did nobody see the potential furore that would come from this? Or were they all too scared to express an opinion about it? Of course there’s always the possibility that they knew full well that this would stir up controversy and get the bloggers buzzing…

Ten grand might be a small price to pay for the number of column-inches they’ve garnered as a result of this. Most of the comments have been disparaging – but it will have raised awareness of the existence of IE8 amongst some users who were still muddling along with IE7 or (heaven forbid!) IE6. If you are one of those users though, I implore you not to support such underhand tactics, but to download an alternative browser, such as Firefox, instead.