Bing it on, Google!
What does that phrase remind you of? A ferocious fighting song, or perhaps sassy competition at its finest? When Microsoft recently launched their Scroogled campaign against Google, phrases like this one became the norm around technological circles.
The purpose of the campaign is to encourage users to stop using Google’s Gmail service and to instead joinMicrosoft’s Outlook services. By echoing Google’s debated malpractice of targeting ads by grabbing keywords from emails, Microsoft has hooked users by appealing to the population’s privacy concerns, which have become increasingly relevant due to some of Google’s tactics.
The “Don’t Get Scroogled” campaign targets a privacy problem that has many people worried. Google scans emails in order to target and tailor advertising alongside the message to the user. The question we, as consumers, must ask is whether this is going too far, or if it’s strictly business.
With the campaign’s opening earlier in the year, television, print, and online advertisements sported the word “Scroogled!” in the colors of Google’s famous logo. The campaign even has its own YouTube channel, ScroogledTruth, filled with promotional videos that are being constantly updated.
“Emails are personal — and people feel that reading through their emails to sell ads is out of bounds,” said Stefan Weitz, senior director of Online Services at Microsoft, in a statement. “We honor the privacy of our Outlook.com users, and we are concerned that Google violates that privacy every time an Outlook.com user exchanges messages with someone on Gmail. This campaign is as much about protecting Outlook.com users from Gmail as it is about making sure Gmail users know what Google’s doing.”
This campaign really appeals to people everywhere because of the morality of Google’s privacy terms. It is natural human behavior to become uncomfortable or angry at the thought of someone you know reading your emails, but imagine the degree to which that concern is multiplied by when the infiltrator becomes a computer.
Gmail’s process of scanning emails for keywords has the ultimate goal of ad manipulation. “For example, if you write a friend to let her know you are separating from your husband,” Microsoft shares, “Google sells ads against this information to divorce lawyers, who post ads alongside it. Or if you ask a friend for vacation suggestions, Google uses this information to target you with ads from travel agencies or airlines that want your business.”
Did you ever think simply buying an app has extreme privacy issues of its own? Well, as Microsoft argues, Google has found a way to make it possible. When you buy an app from Google’s app store, they send your personal information to vendors without clear warning, and there’s no way to opt out. Nothing on the purchase screen or in your email receipt lets you know that the app maker gets your personal details. Once you place the order, even if it is later cancelled, you cannot get your personal information back from the developer. It’s too late at that point — your information is stored on the cloud. Tens of millions of users have already been impacted, and more continue to be every day. What’s more, Google is the only major app store that does this.
But what does Google have to say for itself? Well, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt didn’t make the company’s defense as easy as personal relations might have liked: “There is what I call the creepy line. The Google policy about a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”
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This entire campaign brings to light questions of integrity, intentions, and privacy. Are Microsoft’s intentions truly to protect online customers, or is it simply a way for them to eliminate fierce competition in one of the world’s most fast-paced industries? Some say Microsoft is at fault for blatantly attacking Google just as much as Google is at fault for invading people’s privacy rights. As we move at an exponential rate into an environment filled with more advanced technology, privacy becomes more and more of an issue. Does more technology mean less privacy and protection? The roadblock here is whether a compromise between the two would be necessary, exposing the somewhat concealed flaws of the digital age.