May I suggest the #craprasoft tag on twitter to try to start a trend countering this advertising? Really dislike it.
Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
141–150 of 178 posts
Re: Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
#142I think this is a sign of Microsoft's desperation to stay relevant. Most of the Surface reviews have spoken poorly about the device. Windows RT hasn't been well received. They've tried to revamp their entire image -- with new hardware, software, and extensive marketing -- with limited success. "Look at how cool our product is" hasn't worked for them, so they're resorting to "look at how terrible their product is." Yo…
>so they're resorting to "look at how terrible their product is." I'll presume you must have felt the same way about Apple's I'm a Mac/I'm a PC series of ads? Since all they really did was try to paint a picture of how terrible PCs were, and since Windows is the dominant PC OS, how terrible Windows was.
I felt that way about the ads. The idea that Macs were immune to virus infection was laughable.
Re: Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of the original Surface reviews were negative. The Surface Pro reviews seem to be mostly positive.
"All of the original Surface reviews were negative" No they're not? Then you haven't read ALL of them, mine weren't negative and most of the ones I read weren't negative either. I don't think you want to remember the positive ones, but there are a lot of them.
Even if the reviews are positive, I've spoken to many people about the Surface (techies and not) and very few spoke well of Windows 8/Surface.
Re: Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
#144There is also the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace (http://www.i-comp.org/), a fairly neutral sounding lobby group which (according to Wikipedia) is sponsored by Microsoft.
ICOMP bought an amusing half page ad in a national UK newspaper in the Autumn, quoting the owner of Hot Maps in saying that Google Maps essentially destroyed his promising business. Look at http://hot-map.com/ and judge for yourself..
Re: Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
#145Hah, Microsoft positioning itself as having the moral high ground.
This is amusing in so many different ways.
How the world has turned upside down.
Re: Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
#146I find it hilarious that I emotionally support Google enough that my immediate reaction is "HEY ITS NOT SO BAD" when I see this page; and then roll my eyes at the petition. At the same time I don't use facebook for privacy issues and the thing I am always going to do tomorrow is set up my own mail server. Brains are funny like that.
Is it only an emotional reaction, though? When an algorithm sifts through my e-mail the result is that I see a more targeted ad. When I mess up and inappropriately share something on Facebook it is obvious to lots of people in my life. (And, of course, Facebook tends to vomit up some sort of privacy outrage every five months, so there is always the nagging worry that something one did share in a reasonable way is now…
Point taken, it's not only an emotional reaction; I get that context based ads aren't the same as someone reading my email. I was really just making light of what is an obvious contradiction in my values. We would be naive to think that all google is doing is spam filtering and context-based ads. They are also giving up personal info thousands of times a year at government request, etc.
The main thing is not owning my own data. Google owns my data and I am powerless, more or less, against them. When other companies own data I get all indignant about it; but rationalize it when it's Google.
Re: Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
"All of the original Surface reviews were negative" No they're not? Then you haven't read ALL of them, mine weren't negative and most of the ones I read weren't negative either. I don't think you want to remember the positive ones, but there are a lot of them.
Even if the reviews are positive, I've spoken to many people about the Surface (techies and not) and very few spoke well of Windows 8/Surface.
How many had a Surface? I know lots of people who pan the Surface, but don't actually own one.
Re: Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of the original Surface reviews were negative. The Surface Pro reviews seem to be mostly positive.
"All of the original Surface reviews were negative" No they're not? Then you haven't read ALL of them, mine weren't negative and most of the ones I read weren't negative either. I don't think you want to remember the positive ones, but there are a lot of them.
I'm referring to the ones I saw on the HN front page, not some kind of logical for-all statement. And it's true, I didn't go digging around for other points of view, but I read three or four and they all seemed to say the same thing: an interesting idea with inadequate execution. They were negative in the "promising idea but don't buy this until they get these issues worked out" sense, not in the "what a stupid idea, burn them at the stake" sense. Now, if you want to interpret that as a positive review, be my guest. The reviews I've seen (one or two that made it to the front page) about the Surface Pro seem to be saying "hey, they got the issues worked out" or rather "the issues with Surface and RT don't exist with the Surface Pro" which turns a negative review into a positive one.
Re: Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's define what "read" means in this context. A computer program, most likely a C++ binary, takes the string of your emails, splits on U+0020 and sends the resulting array through a series of algorithms like Levenshtein distance to match to its database of ads.
Text mining has come a long way since 1985, so I don't think that's how it's done (in fact I know it's not done that way), but I guess what you mean is that no human ever looks at the data. That's possible, but not reassuring. Many of the shady purposes this data could be misused for don't require a human to ever read it. Say, one day, that C++ binary computes a score that indicates how reliable, credit worthy, dange…
No, but that's a separate problem from algorithmic ads. When Google shares personal data and not merely statistics about personal data I'll being doing the call-to-arms along side you. What Microsoft wants you to think, however, is that there is an office full of people some where reading your emails and picking ads that they think you might respond to.
Re: Aggressive negative advertising by Microsoft against Google.
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's define what "read" means in this context. A computer program, most likely a C++ binary, takes the string of your emails, splits on U+0020 and sends the resulting array through a series of algorithms like Levenshtein distance to match to its database of ads.
Text mining has come a long way since 1985, so I don't think that's how it's done (in fact I know it's not done that way), but I guess what you mean is that no human ever looks at the data. That's possible, but not reassuring. Many of the shady purposes this data could be misused for don't require a human to ever read it. Say, one day, that C++ binary computes a score that indicates how reliable, credit worthy, dange…
But what business sense does it make for Google to sell the data directly? You can only sell data once; targeted advertising can be sold over and over again.