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Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

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Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#71

Post by throwawaykf03 »

cbr wrote: post #70
throwawaykf03 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read both sides of the story rather than just Google's accusations: http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-... http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-ac...

"Google alleges that Bing monitors what people search for on its site, if they have Internet Explorer equipped with certain features. Bing doesn’t dispute this. But Bing isn’t just monitoring what happens at Google. It monitors what people do as they travel across the entire web." I'd love to see that on the Scroogled page. (I recognize that on the internet I have basically no privacy from people who want to extract…

Users have to opt in to sharing click events with Bing for features like suggested sites ("if they have Internet Explorer equipped with certain features"), and that's what they track. IMO, if users give permission, it's fair game for MS to use that data -- that's still more of an option than what most of the Internet gives users.

Also, AFAIK Hotmail (or live or outlook or whatever it's called now) does not, and never has, targeted ads based on keywords in the email. I'm not that big on privacy so I still use Gmail but at least MS is not being hypocritical in that respect.

Bing search, on the other hand, does all the sorts of tracking and mining Google (and Facebook etc.) does, but so far the Scroogled campaign hasn't said anything about search.

Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#72

Post by code_duck »

I like the "wearables" response also.

>When asked about the shirts, Google said that they "are very interested in Microsoft's latest venture. The wearables market is becoming very competitive".

This could be taken as a reference to Google Glass. MS and their vendors don't seem to have anything near ready to show to compete with Glass, but apparently they're on top of the T-shirt game.

Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#73

Post by RexRollman »

derekp7 wrote: post #32

Well, in spite of the silliness of those commercials, lately I have been creeped out when I start getting blasted by adverts from all over the web based on something I recently searched on. Often times, I'll quickly look up something / fact check what I've read in an article (most recently was "longevity insurance" annuities and reverse mortgages), and now I'm getting a whole bunch of ads aimed at older / retired peo…

Lately, everytime I search for something on Amazon, it will appear on other websites as well. It is probably Amazon doing it but it is annoying, to the point where I know log into Amazon using private mode.

Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#74

Post by notacoward »

Metrop0218 wrote: post #66
notacoward wrote: post #48

Yes, the campaign is childish, but so are the article's misrepresentations. For example: (1) Google Docs - not Drive - does not have "nearly the same capabilities" as Office by any reasonable definition. FFS, they don't even seem to have proper support for custom paragraph styles, widow/orphan control, etc. There are certainly ways in which Google Docs improves over Office, especially wrt collaborative editing, but t…

"especially wrt collaborative editing" - The office web apps got real time collaborative editing a couple of months ago [1]. I've used it and it works quite well. [1] http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/11/06/c...

That's good to know, thanks. I haven't used it myself. I have used the collaborative editing in Google Docs, and it's done well enough that I don't see a whole lot of room for improvement, but I certainly wouldn't deny the possibility that Office has reached parity in this area.

Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#75

Post by jasomill »

VLM wrote: post #40
computerslol wrote: post #26

I found the ad hilarious. Google is an ad company. A brilliant ad company, but still an ad company. As far as I know, this is something that is not on most consumer's minds. The scroogled ads are pretty good for microsoft standards. My concern is less with the data collection, and more with the lack of native application support. If it looks like a laptop, consumers like my parents will think they found the best deal…

"how different is it to write a chromebook app than an android one?" I almost bought my wife a chromebook for christmas, I researched this a bit for fun. Might buy one for myself too. Basically you google for "how to write chromebook app" (or Bing, LOL who am I kidding no one uses bing) and eventually get to https://developers.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/index You probably want "packaged app" which unsurprisingly tur…

Maybe so, but lots of people use the remaining 1% for most of their work, and some of us prefer the OS X (or Windows, or X11) desktop environment to the browser for most applications. I sure do, though I also generally prefer well-designed Web pages to native mobile apps for accessing information on the Internet.

Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#76

Post by ChuckMcM »

Warning Rant mode:

Wow, that is an insanely monetized blog. Does anyone else see random works linking to search ads and if you select something you get a search query ad?

The content is also pretty muddy. In my opinion Microsoft's campaign isn't childish, it's just lame. Does Google do all these things? Of course they do, it makes them billions of dollars a quarter. Does it bother Microsoft that they can't seem to get away with the same kinds of things? Of course it does, their search ads monetize at 1/3 to 1/5th the rate that Google's do. Would they like someone other than folks who understand how search works to "get" this ? Sure.

But that is the same battle animal rights people have trying to convince egg eaters that the eggs came out of tortured chickens. At one level it may be true, and at a much larger level it may be totally irrelevant to the consumer.

So where does that put the OP who is trying exploit Microsoft's strategy to pick up some AdSense coin out of Google? Does he care? Really? His subtext is "Hey we're all gettin' rich here off the Goog, Microsoft. Go whine somewhere else." Heck Google doesn't particularly care about their search results at the level where this is being argued, they only care that they are tasty enough to lure enough eyeballs to feed their customers, the advertisers. If they get less tasty they will fix them, if someone gets mouthy about whether or not their content should be considered tasty they will fix them too.

There is web search technology which is one thing, and there is web search the business which is a completely different thing. Confusing them will make it hard to reason coherently about them.

Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#77

Post by katcooke »

jedmeyers wrote: post #68
katcooke wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specific claim that they don't track users by phrases inside the texts of their emails does check out.

Who checked it? A "1 hour ago registered" astroturfer?

Well, in that case nothing is "checkable". How do you know Eric Schmidt didn't read your Gmail and read all your chats today?

http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...

Also, please discuss facts and keep out the lame stuff.

Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#78

Post by sigsergv »

anologwintermut wrote: post #59
notacoward wrote: post #48

Yes, the campaign is childish, but so are the article's misrepresentations. For example: (1) Google Docs - not Drive - does not have "nearly the same capabilities" as Office by any reasonable definition. FFS, they don't even seem to have proper support for custom paragraph styles, widow/orphan control, etc. There are certainly ways in which Google Docs improves over Office, especially wrt collaborative editing, but t…

Not to mention, a lot of marketing is childish. The Mac vs. PC ads were childish. They worked ( to the extent anyone can say TV ads work)

Mac vs. PC campaign was also very ironic and inspiring (probably because it suggests and proposes new features, new way of thinking), but MSFT campaign is really stupid (if not worse, because it's merely portrays google in a negative light).

Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#79

Post by skrowl »

aspir wrote: post #4

Did anyone really need convincing that the Scroogled campaign was childish? This campaign is so bad, it's going to be used in case studies for years to come. We're literally looking at history in the making with this campaign. If MSFT declines in the coming years, this will be regarded as a signal of the beginning of the end. If they improve, this will be regarded as a "darkest before the dawn" moment. There are plen…

Every time I see those ads, I can't help but wonder how many people that had never heard of a Chromebook before went out and researched (and then purchased) one.

Re: Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish

#80

Post by VLM »

jasomill wrote: post #75
VLM wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"how different is it to write a chromebook app than an android one?" I almost bought my wife a chromebook for christmas, I researched this a bit for fun. Might buy one for myself too. Basically you google for "how to write chromebook app" (or Bing, LOL who am I kidding no one uses bing) and eventually get to https://developers.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/index You probably want "packaged app" which unsurprisingly tur…

Maybe so, but lots of people use the remaining 1% for most of their work, and some of us prefer the OS X (or Windows, or X11) desktop environment to the browser for most applications. I sure do, though I also generally prefer well-designed Web pages to native mobile apps for accessing information on the Internet.

I totally get what you're saying, I'm just saying for the vast majority of people who mostly live in a browser, "switching" into a browser doesn't have much meaning because they're already there, this just works a little better for them.

There exist a couple remote desktop apps, rdesktop rdp vnc whatever. And I have a perfectly good virtualization compatible server in the basement, so in the unlikely even she needed a "real" desktop, its not hard to remotely access.

The biggest problem with chromebooks is the good ones are "always" sold out and the bad ones have weird issues like the video drivers are not compatible with normal codecs so do whatever you want as long as its not youtube / netflix / prime video / whatever. And that is a problem. If you're sold out of the good stuff, you don't need to buy advertising.

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