Scroogled. A great business play.

Scroogled ( http://www.scroogled.com/ ) is out with some new content.  The theme should really be more apparent to non-techies now.

Excellent business play.  Working for the customer and in a way that cuts the revenue stream for a competitor at the same time.

I am no fan of Google, but negative campaigning sucks. You're all complaining that I am "too negative", well, look at Microsoft's ad department.

It's even more whiney than the PC VS Mac ads.

The sad thing is that the goon army at Neowin (the 2010s equivalents of 90s freetards) is now even using that term ("scroogled").

How's telemetry doing by the way? It's brain-melt ironic, that the same company that apparently can even record how many minutes go by until users click on an icon after reboot, complains about anonymous bots of another company. It's not like actual human Google employees are reading mails or something.

That guy was worth his money:

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsofts-dc-insider-could-throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-google

46 seconds ago, wastingtime​withforums wrote

I am no fan of Google, but negative campaigning sucks.

++

@evildictaitor: Help me out here.  How is looking out for customer's privacy a negative thing?

I like the actual content (facts, visual demonstrations, etc) but I don't like their implementation. The delivery is just very sleazy. I feel like they could better package all this info into Outlook.com ads: voiceover: "Customers are delighted knowing that their emails are private." Show brief interviews with people who made the switch with each one saying how they didn't know googs was prying into their emails and how much safer they feel with Outlook.com.

2 minutes ago, davewill wrote

@evildictaitor: Help me out here.  How is looking out for customer's privacy a negative thing?

I'm not saying that Google arn't being pretty evil by looking through people's emails to make money. I'm just saying that negative ad campaigns about competitors products looks petty.

Microsoft could have phrased this more positively, and could have just ignored going after gmail specifically:

"Does your email provider look through your emails to show you ads? Outlook.com doesn't".

See - it's easy to give the same message whilst concentrating on the fact that your product is good, rather than that their product isn't.

Also, just from an entirely practical point of view, when you say "Outlook.com doesn't browse through your emails to serve you ads", "outlook.com" is the subject of the sentence, and since that's the product you're trying to push, that's a good thing.

If you say "Gmail looks through your emails and serves you ads", then the subject of your ad is "Gmail", hence you're reinforcing your competitor's brand and entirely forgetting to mention your own.

These ads are bad form, bad faith, bad style, and they're bad marketing. Outlook ads should be about outlook. They shouldn't be about gmail.

3 minutes ago, davewill wrote

@evildictaitor: Help me out here.  How is looking out for customer's privacy a negative thing?

It's the process in which they do it that's seen as negative.

@evildictaitor: Fair enough.  By the way, good alternatives proposed.

@evildictaitor: I agree with wastingtime and you about it being dirty. But, I do not agree that this would improve Gmail awareness. GMail is already quite well known and the domain is scroogle.com, meaning people visiting the site already know about Google, and who doesn't? And PC vs Mac ad does makes a lot more impact than their previous "my product is cool" campaign. While dirty, scroogle is a very powerful and effective tatics, especially the name is so catchy.

"Scroogle" is catchy?  Well, I guess it has a better chance to catch on than "Bing!"

It just comes across as juvenile and tabloid-y.

ugh, Mark Penn continues to find ways to annoy me in every sphere of life no matter where he or I go, it's amazing.

This sort of mud-slinging campaign is almost inevitably self-defeating, as most people are turned off by negative advertising, even if they know it to be partly true.

MS should sack the morons behind this, and focus on promoting their own product strengths (whatever they are). Let people draw their own inferences from the positive points, rather than acting like school-children dobbing in someone to the teacher.

1 hour ago, elmer wrote

This sort of mud-slinging campaign is almost inevitably self-defeating, as most people are turned off by negative advertising, even if they know it to be partly true.

MS should sack the morons behind this, and focus on promoting their own product strengths (whatever they are). Let people draw their own inferences from the positive points, rather than acting like school-children dobbing in someone to the teacher.

+ 100

the ONLY ad i have seen in ...5? years that i like by MS is the paint / little girl ad

first of all - it is a great "app" (read about what went into decifering finger from brush and pen...

..it is the only app ive found that does this ... ANYWHERE on anything

plus the song is cool - and the ad is fun

everything else... meh

Negative advertising (in fact, even mentioning your competitor's product directly) is illegal in the Netherlands. Having grown up without those kinds of ads, I always find them to come across really horribly. That goes for PC vs. Mac and stuff like this equally.

7 minutes ago, Sven Groot wrote

Negative advertising (in fact, even mentioning your competitor's product directly) is illegal in the Netherlands. Having grown up without those kinds of ads, I always find them to come across really horribly. That goes for PC vs. Mac and stuff like this equally.

Same in the UK. Whenever I see negative ads it makes me feel less like I want to use the product from the company doing the negative ad. So this advert made me less likely to move from gmail to Outlook.com. Or in other words, this ad did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to in my sample of 1 people.

i got my-name @  above

just like i got myname @  gmail

i use both when necessary 

like in wars and stuff...

lol

i meant when convenient