Well, now Microsoft has put a full-page ad in the Washington Post (and no doubt elsewhere) whining about Google’s business model for their Shopping service. Seems that Microsoft doesn’t like that Google’s Shopping page shows products from paying sponsors.
This looks like a pathetic effort by a desperate Microsoft.
For the site, add .com to the subject of this post.
Been seeing it on banner ads now, too. One of the lamest marketing campaigns I have ever seen. ZOMG! Google is selling ads instead of giving us free stuff solely out of the goodness of their hearts!
Google gives nothing free, Mr. Commodity.
LOL. Holly hell that looks like one of the worst webpages I’ve ever seen, and the idea is hilariously bad.
I love how they are trying to claim that targeted ads are somehow a bad thing. Targeted advertising based on collecting user’s data is one of the best things that has ever happened to both users and marketers ever… it makes users happy because they actually get to be informed of products and services they might be interested in using to make their lives better, and it makes marketers happier because they aren’t wasting time/money advertising to folks who don’t want to see their ads.
Edit: I meant to type “Holy Hell” up there. Sorry Holly.
And they are directing people to their website through… targeted ads! They’re splitting some mighty fine hairs to say that ads targeted based on the content of your email are bad, but ads targeted based on any other information we might glean about you are ok.
I’ll go with sour grapes. They managed to squander billions in their foray into advertising with aQuantive. (I had friends who worked there, it was not fun or pretty)
God bless you always :):)
I don’t know, even people my age (early 20’s) don’t seem to really get that they’re the product, not the customer. On top of that, the hysteria of <SERVICE> is <READING YOUR PERSONAL DATA> (where <SERVICE> is often something like Facebook) is widespread and gets tons of freakout blog posts, status updates, etc.
I mean, how often have those “Facebook can use things you post for advertising!” hysterical chain letters gone around by now?
It’s stupid and obvious, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be effective.
I almost started a pit thread on this but decided it was just too pathetic to work up even enough ire for a mini-rant.
Hasn’t Microsoft incorporated advertising into Windows 8? You want sleazy marketing, look no further than a paid product (no cheaper than the previous version) with built-in advertising.
Now that is sleazy. If I pay for software, I expect it to be ad free. Looks like Linux will be going on my desktop next time I upgrade.
This is such a sad campaign. Google should turn “scroogle” into one of their easter eggs and have any search for scroogle return a definition of “to have one’s panties in a wad over poor market share.”
The saddest part, they have a global campaign for a petition that has been going on for a week or more and only has 53,000 signatures. Texas got more signatures for secession in a week and that was on a government site from people who don’t trust the government!
For all the times I’ve seen MS’s ads thrown out there, to only have 53k signatures is a serious sign that no one cares about your issues.
Eliahna:
Isn’t Windows 8 nothing but an advertisement? The computer I bought started off with tiles to click for Amazon, NetFlix, and a host of other merchant web sites. On top of that, the Media Player no longer plays actual MEDIA (e.g., CDs and DVDs that you paid for once and own forever), but is merely a gateway to sell Microsoft’s streaming content services. And they got rid of Solitaire and Minesweeper, the “games” tile is now also a link to games you have to pay for.
This makes me wonder: Google apps for business is $5/user/month. If I get that, do I still get ads in my email? Seems like the obvious counterargument for Google – ads are how you pay for “free” services, but if you’d like to pay another way we can accommodate.
Especially funny is the “Our position” statement.
[QUOTE=Scroogled]
Outlook.com prioritizes your privacy. The email service doesn’t look at the content of your email to sell ads.
Outlook.com only scans the contents of your email to help protect you and display, categorize, and sort your mail appropriately.
[/QUOTE]
I mean, if I was sending messages to my secret married lover and was paranoid enough about it to be worried about even my email provider finding out, would I really be worried about why they were reading my email? If both are reading my email to filter out scams and malware, does it really matter that one also will point me to a great deal on chocolates, flowers, and condoms in bulk?
Enkel–hysterical!
Those preinstalled tiles aren’t part of Win8, they were added by your PC manufacturer.
Media Player should still play and rip CDs, but DVDs were removed. Adding Windows 8 Media Center pack, which is (I think) still currently free, will add DVD playback back in. I mostly use WMP to play ripped audio and video files, which is continues to do just fine. It also doesn’t hook into any MS streaming services (that’s what the Xbox Music and Video apps are for).
Solitaire and Minesweeper still exist; they’re just now free “apps” you need to download from the Store. I’m not in love with the new Solitaire, but the new Minesweeper is slick.
[/apologia]
Re: Scroogled…yeah, terrible ad campaign. Nobody that cares is going to be persuaded by the smarmy, flaky ads. The saddest part is that it’s a promotional push for outlook.com which is a very, very strong product itself. Instead of discussing ANY of their own strengths, marketing has focused on a single, boring, well-known quasi-negative of their main competitor. Boo.
I do love google and use a lot of their lesser known services like google alerts, but I have to say that I do now check bing shopping in addition to google shopping because there have been occasions where things have shown up there that don’t show up on google. Specifically, I will usually find the same items, but bing will often list different vendors that GS doesn’t and although the price difference isn’t huge, it might be a couple percentage points.
Of course this is anecdotal based on maybe a half dozen recent searches, but I have to go with MS on this one based on my limited personal experience so far.
edit: btw, bing is especially good for shopping amazon. There have been a couple times that amazon would not show me the cheapest price for something like clamp lights (the kind with spring clamps that you attach ad hoc to a beam or shelf) but bing did - from an Amazon vendor.
Is any of that Microsoft’s doing, or is it the gritware loaded by the PC maker?
MS does promote its own products, but I’ve never had an OEM load of any Windows version load third-party icons and apps.