Frankly, I would never believe that it is not a fake if I saw just a screenshot. But you can see it live on http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/ (if it shows 404, just try again. :) ).

So they claim that Chrome is "tarnished". If you visit this page with other browsers, you'll find out that you use "old Firefox", "boring Safari" or "that browser" (if you use Opera, or FF on Linux). That's the way to appreciate competition! :)

The funniest thing in this marketing campaign, of course, is that they are willingly detach their browser (and their website) from the rest of the web. "It's a cleverly concealed webpage that only Internet Explorer 8 can view" - do they ever follow standards in their website or browser development?

And if you end up on the IE8 page, you will see something even more hilarious. The "Browser comparison chart" from Microsoft point of view:


Thanks, Microsoft, for giving me a good laugh! Such a bunch of overlook and lies bundled together on one page; seriously, it looks even more like a self-criticising sarcasm on their side, without even a try to make it look trustworthy. Starting with omitting Safari and Opera, just "forgetting" ticks for Privacy, Reliability, Ease of Use and Developer Tools; putting them in the wrong column for Security; telling the users that they don't really need Customizability and Performance at all because IE8 sucks in this, lying about Web Standards support because they couldn't find out how to tell users that they don't need them; adding "nice" but purposely vague lines like Manageability to get more ticks for IE8.

I wonder, when will Microsofties realize that they actually have to clean up their karma to get any success and devotion? So far they seemingly deliberately turn people away.

UPDATE: One of Mozilla developers responded with a very clever pun: go to http://www.tengrandisburiedthere.com/ and zoom in.

UPDATE 2: Apparently, there was enough of outcry for Microsoft, and they modified the promotional page to remove insults and cloaking.