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IE users are less savvy than Firefox/Opera/etc. users, so they would "need" a plugin like this more than Firefox et al users.

Also it's probably easier to get IE users to download something like this.

I'm not sure that this is a promo for IE8 so much as a promo for Amazon's IE8 toolbar. Especially if when you saw this page you were running IE8.

Nope, I was in Chrome on Amazon.com and there was a big banner to the right on the home suggesting I download IE8 optimized for amazon.com.

You can probably still see the same ad. Do you see any alternative pages with toolbars for Firefox, or Chrome?

My suspicion was that this was one way Amazon is paying back MS as part of the patent agreement/shakedown MS and Amazon recently reached.