Given MS's track record in recent years, I think they really need to stop trash talking other people - more often than not they end up eating their words.
Nov 2007: 'Ballmer Calls Android a "Press Release"' http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/08/1326234 'Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they're welcome in our world,' [Ballmer] added."
Oct. 2009: "Big Cellphone Makers Shifting to Android System" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/26android.html 'But now that smartphones are popular, Microsoft’s operating system, Windows Mobile, is foundering. More cellphone makers are turning to the free Android operating system made by Microsoft’s latest nemesis, Google.'
With a history like that, I take every example of trash talking by Ballmer to mean "yikes! those guys are going to kick our butts."
Which they have, by the way. My Android-powered phone is fast, powerful, and sleek. I have hated every Windows Mobile phone I've ever touched - slow, buggy, and crashy are how I'd describe them.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2007/04/ballmer-says-i...
"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance," said Ballmer. "It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."
The charts here have iPhone handily out-pacing all Windows Mobile units:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/03/canalys_q3_200...
Why Ballmer is still employed at any Fortune 500 company, much less running one, is a problem worthy of serious academic study.
So, you've given Google's competitor's product a try because of what Microsoft said. Maybe Microsoft knows a little about marketing after all...
I am starting to see pattern in their marketing, this plus the windows 7 launch party video, seinfeld ads... these were so bad that they got people talking. It might be an example of latent marketing :-)
Sounds more like a generic trash talk on everything non-MS Office, than a purposeful marketing move.
Where Google and Microsoft are both sitting on two cash cows (Add words + Search) vs (Office + Window) and are bouncing around trying to diversify (XBox vs Wave etc) they are not really focused on killing off the competition. However, Zoho is trying to turn Office into it's cash cow and is focused on building a great long term product which means they are going to try and make an equal or better product for less money. Which is why I expect Zoho to build a stand alone office sweet long before Google goes there.