How Microsoft Scroogled Itself | Hacker News Reader

How Microsoft Scroogled Itself

techland.time.com

53 pointsrainmaker2331 comments

Specifics from The New Republic's article on the difference between a product marketing a political campaign:

"For starters, political races have concrete deadlines. When election day comes, voters will make their decisions based on what's managed to stick in their brain about either candidate. On consumer issues, people can decide to adopt a new product at any time in the future, and if one brand doesn't convince them it's worth it, they just won't. "

"In addition, the bar for buying or using something different is a lot higher than deciding who to vote for. One ballot might play a tiny role in determining who runs the free world, but switching your search engine or email client is a unilateral change to your day-to-day life—both in the ways you conduct business, and the image you project to the outside world. "

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112421/microsofts-scroogl...

Why are people signing a petition against Gmail? Just stop using it. Use something else.

Gmail will even make it easy for you:

http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...

Well because they still want to use gmail aside from the things that they find annoying.

Speaking for myself, the "scroogled" campaign certainly worsened my perception of Microsoft. Or, to be more precise, it renewed my distrust for them. A distrust that I had developed when they were really dominant and blatantly abused that position, but which had be waning in recent years.

What this indicates is that you are not the campaign's target because you already have a strong opinion about each company - one which may have been formed before Google as we know it existed.

Outside the tech bubble, that's an extreme position. Most people just use Google and Office. They buy iPhones that run Android because they're free with the contract, etc.

Microsoft is pandering to a different group - those concerned about Google constructing dossiers upon individuals. Outside the tech bubble this is also an extreme position.

The difference between your extreme position and that which Microsoft is targeting is that yours is dying - who gives a crap about Netscape, etc? On the other hand, concern over corporate data mining is somewhat likely to grow. It even has the catchy name of "creepiness" and a monkey-boy video.

Nicely put, but don't forget that the opinion of people in the tech bubble is usually pretty influential on those outside it.

Interesting take on the subject which fails to mention one of the worst problems with the campaign — Microsoft appears to be trying to do exactly what it accuses Google of doing.

One of the things that makes lighthearted negative ads effective is that they usually aren't more true of the company throwing mud.

We should note that Microsoft has frequently engaged in slightly less overtly negative "taste test" style advertising (e.g. bing vs google, windows phone 7 vs. anyone) despite usually not comparing all that favorably.

Microsoft was doing the same thing or very similar to what they were accusing Google of in every single negative campaign they've done against Google (Scroogle was like the 4th or 5th that I count).

Flagged.

Maybe I just need to wake up, drink some coffee, and not be so cranky. But I'm getting really fed up with these linked pieces that are nothing more than a thin veneer over some other publication's / writer's article.

I had to use Google to find the article that Time was talking about:

http://www.newrepublic.com/authors/lydia-depillis

Why not just directly link to the New Republic article?

EDIT: I didn't notice that I could click on the two words "good piece". They are not underlined and I couldn't see that it was a different color (I'm color blind).

There's a link now (click on "good piece"). But yes the post should just link to that one for sure.

I noticed that later. I amended my comment. Thanks.

I actually thought the campaign was kind of effective (though not the phrase scroogled). I don't think regular people really realize the extent to which all Google products are merely vectors to build personal profiles of you to sell advertising.

At some point for me the balance shifted to trusting MS more. I'd rather pay for a locked down version of Office than have Google Docs troll my information.

Not to mention, in this case the switch is easy. Outlook.com is wonderful. Recent incarnations of Gmail are a UX disaster.

The only reason they are targeting Google with a smear-campaign is that they want to be making the money Google is making by doing the exact same thing themselves.

outlook privacy: http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/default.mspx

"We use the information we collect to provide the services you request. Our services may include the display of personalized content and advertising."

"We use your information to inform you of other products or services offered by Microsoft and its affiliates, and to send you relevant survey invitations related to Microsoft services."

That, and Microsoft has a long history of trying to cut off competitors' air supply. If Microsoft can hurt Google's brand and reduce their advertising dollars, then Google becomes much less of a potential future competitive threat to Microsoft's Office cash cow.

"I don't think regular people really realize the extent to which all Google products are merely vectors to build personal profiles of you to sell advertising."

That, and, the apps are very useful to many. Let's not kid ourselves and pretend it's some kind of sham.

Its not a sham. But its not the most above board business model either. It takes advantage of the fact that most people don't know how much privacy they're giving up nor do they have a way to properly valuate that in any case. It takes advantage of consumer ignorance, in the same way as say credit cards where ordinary people are bad at estimating how much they really pay over in interest for the benefit of getting stuff sooner. Or subsidized cell phones. Taking advantage of peoples short sightedness is a great business model from a profitability standpoint. People think your product is cheaper than it really is.

Seems like the mistake, here, might've been hiring Mark Penn. He also "scroogled" Hillary Clinton's campaign back in '08.

Despite the terrible Microsoft execution, I think there is a real issue here about privacy... it's just that nobody in their right mind is going to weigh in just because Microsoft tells them to.

People are getting more aware of what happens to their data - and concerned about it - and while a political solution will probably be cackhanded, the tech community can surely do better than giants slogging it out over soundbites.

I'm not worried about my privacy because they use the data to track ads. I'm never really worried about them doing that for ads, since there's no significant danger in that. What I'm a LOT more worried about is about the government getting those e-mails so easily (just saying from a normal person's privacy rights vs government abuses). But at least Google is a bit transparent about that data - Microsoft is not.

But my problem with it is that it's keeping Google from offering the ability to encrypt e-mail and have "zero knowledge" policies for e-mail. This is why I think Google will be one of the last (if ever) to adopt such policies or offer such service. But I don't think Microsoft will do it any earlier either. So I really don't see Microsoft's services as "better" in any way, from this point of view.

If I'll ever move my e-mail, it will probably be to a company that does care about stuff like this and lives outside of US, not to Microsoft, which is just another side of the same coin. I want a whole new coin.

  > "zero knowledge" policies for e-mail

I don't believe this is entirely possible. If Google were to encrypt all incoming email with your public key (so that only you could decrypt them) at the entry point (SMTP), it would still be possible to law enforcement/government to force Google to copy the incoming emails prior to the encryption step.

Even if all incoming emails were encrypted prior to hitting Google's servers, the headers would still be visible (plus things like automated emails will probably never be encrypted).

I think outside the tech world people will find the attack ads useful information. It will create distrust for Google among casual email users and will be succesful for them. Their target audience is not HN viewers. I also had to mentally reevaluate my relationship with Google.

Microsoft looks like a nefarious cry baby.

Google looks like a creepy privacy invader.

Its fun to support the winning team :)

I use and really like outlook.com but this campaign felt wrong and was incredibly frustrating.

Interesting, the petition mentioned in the article had 6k signatures when the author released it.

Now it has 24000

I guess the author of the article ended helping microsoft crazy petition by linking directly to it from his article... Kinda counterproductive perhaps.

The article says there were 6900 signatures when the author wrote it.

Microsoft's strategy seem to muddy Google's water, make users question them.

Before passing judgment we'd need to know:

1. What % of people know that Google scans your email for ads

2. How many of them are upset about it and how upset.

What tech blogger say doesn't matter as much, their readers are already in one camp or another.

The Scroogled campaign with shopping was more effective. Judging by comments, many Google users didn't know that everything was an ad, not the "most relevant and unbiased result"

"Microsoft's strategy seem to muddy Google's water, make users question them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

"nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment"

Except that Google is the IBM here, MS is probably trusted less. IMO, they want to even the distrust score and then talk features

Having lived through the 90s, Google would have to do something incredibly bad, and Microsoft something inconceivably uncharacteristically good, before I'd ever trust Microsoft more than Google (not that I trust either to any great extent).

I clicked the article to read some insightful analysis and all I found was contentless tripe filled with blogspam and a non-sequitir title.

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