Microsoft's Anti-Google Video Campaign

Youtube by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-22 11:54 · Score: 5, Funny

Who owns youtube?

Re:Youtube by hcs_$reboot · 2012-02-22 12:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

That's what I always liked about Google, so far: they are pretty fair regarding search results and other contents in general.

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Re:Youtube by Toe,+The · 2012-02-22 12:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Content is content. Google doesn't care what it is as long as you consume it (and of course they track you and advertise at you).
Ever seen the Simpsons talk about Fox? Same deal.
Re:Youtube by Tharsman · 2012-02-22 12:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

They have no choice. The minute they start controlling the content they lose the "web host" IP protection status.
Re:Youtube by symbolset · 2012-02-22 12:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

Hosting videos ads that attack you is such over-the-top fairness that it's remarkable. I hope Google makes more off the ads than Microsoft paid to produce them.

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Re:Youtube by metalmonkey · 2012-02-22 13:18 · Score: 2

The other day I found a message from google in my gmail spam box. However it was the notice that privacy policy was changing for my apps domain, I put this down to fair algorithm rather than intent since the privacy change was otherwise pretty well advertised. I guess I could have gone the other way depending on my temperament at the time.
Re:Youtube by Anthony+Mouse · 2012-02-22 13:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

Where do people come up with this nonsense? They can control the content all the like. But if they do it in a way that is detrimental to their users, people will switch to something else. That is what keeps them from censoring Microsoft and anyone else critical of them, not whatever "'web host' IP protection status" is supposed to mean.
Of course, that doesn't mean Microsoft isn't running a FUD campaign against them. (It seems that they are.)
Re:Youtube by symbolset · 2012-02-22 13:40 · Score: 4, Informative

Last I checked seeing the ads is the tradeoff for receiving the amusing content - a deal I entered of my own free will. Nobody clicked it for me, and the ads never came near my throat. This is how the Internet works. If you don't like ad supported content you should probably sell your computer, tv and radio - and cancel your mail delivery too.

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Re:Youtube by poetmatt · 2012-02-22 13:45 · Score: 4, Informative

Umm, microsoft still filters results about things involving google and microsoft so that they are favorable to microsoft. This has nothing to do with "IP protection status", and considering that such a phrase doesn't exist, please don't make such a claim.
DMCA protection has nothing to do with choosing to filter content in any way.
Re:Youtube by FilthCatcher · 2012-02-22 14:23 · Score: 5, Funny

Brilliant. I'm going to watch all the Microsoft ads on youtube and make sure I click every ad link I can find on the pages.
Re:Youtube by Intelligenta · 2012-02-22 18:55 · Score: 2

Brilliant. I'm going to watch all the Microsoft ads on youtube and make sure I click every ad link I can find on the pages.
And hurt Google? Because that is what you're ultimately doing when pointlessly clicking ads without real interest. You're bringing down the quality of Google's ad network and hurting them.
Re:Youtube by JasterBobaMereel · 2012-02-23 00:16 · Score: 2

Content is content. Microsoft doesn't care what it is as long as you consume it (and of course they track you and advertise at you).
The Alternative is no better ..

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Re:Youtube by Karzz1 · 2012-02-23 02:44 · Score: 3, Informative

I believe what GP is *trying* to allude to is "common carrier" status. However, Google is not a carrier in this respect.

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Stay Classy Microsoft by Anne_Nonymous · 2012-02-22 11:56 · Score: 4, Funny

Don't ever change.

Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Squiddie · 2012-02-22 12:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

They're kind of right on this one. I wouldn't trust google docs to run a business. I mean, I might venture to do libreoffice, or other free software, not only because it is a better software model, but it's good for the company, but MS is right in this case. Not so sure about the gmail thing, though I don't appreciate being scanned, which is why I don't use it.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Grishnakh · 2012-02-22 12:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

They're right like Karl Marx was right. Marx wrote about the problems with capitalist systems, and he was absolutely right on many of his points. Then he came up with his own system which was a complete disaster and even worse (much worse) than the system he wanted to replace. This is just like MS: they might have some valid points about Google, but anything they offer up as an alternative is going to be even worse.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by danomac · 2012-02-22 12:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

Microsoft is just very upset that they didn't think of it first.
Just like most of their other projects, except Google won't sell to them.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Squiddie · 2012-02-22 12:49 · Score: 2

That's true. The MS alternatives suck, but let's not be blind to the problems that google has. Plus we already have good alternatives. It's called FOSS.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by EdIII · 2012-02-22 12:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Anything that Microsoft offers is going to be vastly superior.... in at least one sense as it relates to Google Docs.
Office 365 is a paid only service where the users would be the customers and not the product. That's MS current alternative to Google Docs, and really, they had it up before Google Docs. At least, AFAIK, they did internally. I am not really sure when they officially starting offering it as SaaS.
Google Docs, the free version, is not something I would ever use for business for one second. You have no reason to trust Google, and really, you can't take on that kind of liability with most businesses that deal with anything close to sensitive information about customers. Not possible unless you are really stupid, have no lawyers to tell you are stupid, or just reckless.
There *is* a paid version of Google Docs. You can disable advertisements in gmail in the paid version. However, I still don't feel good about Google having access to all that information. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
With both SaaS platforms you have APIs and can integrate other processes. I'm sure they are pretty similar in the vast majority of features and capabilities.
In the end, I would not want to use either one of them. If I can roll my own and host my own servers I would do that. I am not faced with that particular problem. Most of the stuff I deal with already has robust platforms for that particular industry that allow for a lot of collaboration already.
What MS is really butthurt about when it comes to Google Docs is that they are not offering the free product. MS is not the only one butthurt about it either. The number of businesses that can't make it because they can't compete against Google's free is quite large.
I don't have any particular answers to that. I just know Google causes a lot of problems for business simply because they leverage their advertising revenue to drive products from a paid model down to a free model.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Grishnakh · 2012-02-22 13:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

True, unlike with political systems, we actually have a great alternative in Free software. No one's come up with a better system that capitalist republics yet, and the alternatives are all horrible: Marxism, feudalism, etc.
In fact, MS criticizing Google is a lot like Feudalists criticizing the Communists.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Tharsman · 2012-02-22 13:03 · Score: 2

Not entirely true. This is just email we talking about, and any paid email service that has no ads is a viable alternative, not a disaster (unless you consider paying a small fee a month to be a disaster.)
But the Gmail Man video is right in many aspects, specially the Gmail Man's own arguments, like "who care" or "it's business" and "I'm just skimming for keywords." It IS a funny video, and I have a Gmail account that I keep active until the day I find a decent and viable replacement for Reader... until then, may as well use GMail too if they are anyways scanning my news reading preferences.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Grishnakh · 2012-02-22 13:23 · Score: 2

The number of businesses that can't make it because they can't compete against Google's free is quite large.
I don't have any particular answers to that. I just know Google causes a lot of problems for business simply because they leverage their advertising revenue to drive products from a paid model down to a free model.
Right, but how many companies is Google really driving out of business? There aren't exactly a lot of competitors in the office suite space any more, and I certainly wouldn't be sad seeing MS driven out of business by losing their MS Office cash cow, plus we always have Libre/OpenOffice which works fine and runs locally. What else does Google do? Well they've dominated the search engine space for over a decade now, so no one's been driven out of business there in a while. And then there's Google Maps, but again there wasn't that much competition before they came along anyway, and Yahoo and Bing still have their maps products (in fact, Bing maps frequently do better than Google IME).
Offhand, I can't really think of any other markets where Google has driven anyone out of business or caused problems. I can think of a ton of projects they've started up and then thrown the towel in on (frequently the first I had heard of them was when they announced they were giving up).
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Grumbleduke · 2012-02-22 13:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

And then there's Google Maps, but again there wasn't that much competition before they came along anyway, and Yahoo and Bing still have their maps products (in fact, Bing maps frequently do better than Google IME).
Some map companies, such as Streetmap or Multimap, would counter that point, arguing loudly that Google unfairly drove them out of business (or to a significantly lower level of business) by promoting Google Maps over their services via search, in breach of EU competition law.
At least, they did, a couple of weeks ago, at a meeting about "search neutrality" (Google* the term if you're interested...) in the UK Parliament last week (I happened to be there - it's not quite as insane as it sounds). That said, recent anecdotal experiments I performed indicated that in most ways Google does actually provide a better service (although I do like some things Bing maps does).
Google has caused quite a lot of problems for small businesses trying to "compete" with Google, particularly when Google has a "rival" service and promotes that via their search. That said, it remains to be seen whether or not Google has crossed the line into unjustifiable anti-competitive behaviour over this sort of thing (and the EC/CJEU, and US FTC etc. will likely be ruling on that soon). Not that MS is a strange to anti-competition lawsuits, iirc it's Windows Media Player-related one in the EU is still ongoing, with MS trying to get out of its >€1bn fine...
*See what I did there?
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by swillden · 2012-02-22 14:01 · Score: 5, Interesting

That's true. The MS alternatives suck, but let's not be blind to the problems that google has. Plus we already have good alternatives. It's called FOSS.
I'm a fan of F/LOSS, but there really isn't a F/LOSS alternative to Docs. What I mean is that while LibreOffice, for example, does a bunch of things that Docs doesn't do, Docs also does some really compelling things that LibreOffice et al don't do. Specifically, Docs is a really powerful collaboration tool. I work for Google, so I've obviously been forced to use Docs extensively, for all of my design docs, presentations, etc. I briefly found Docs' limitations annoying, but the first time I sent a design doc out for review and saw the power of the collaboration model, I knew I'd never go back.
Unless you've tried it, it's hard to understand just how powerful it is to be able to have multiple people all working on a document in real time. Even if you don't need real-time collaboration, it's much better to have everyone commenting on and tweaking the same copy of the document, rather than sending copies around and then having someone try to pull all of the disparate changes together. And when that can happen in real-time, and you have either text chat or even full multi-party video conferencing (Google Hangouts) integrated into the collaborative document system... it's an amazingly effective way to get multiple detailed opinions and quickly arrive at consensus decisions, even when people are scattered around the world.
My kids' school uses Google Apps, including Docs (no, I had nothing to do with that decision; they made it before I joined Google and before I moved here) and I love it for that as well. My kids share their papers with me and I fix minor errors (and later go over the changes with them -- the markup on the revision view makes that easy), or add comments about more significant things I think they can improve, then later I see what they changed. My wife does the same. Sometimes all this happens more or less in real-time, while we're talking about it. Other times, due to schedule mismatches, the automatically-generated e-mails about comments and responses drive the process. It works well either way, though I prefer the interaction.
Of course, when the assignment is complete, turning it in is as simple as sharing the doc with the teacher, and the teacher's comments and corrections show up in the same way, via the same process. It's very powerful.
My wife often writes letters to various entities, and while she has good ideas she doesn't always structure them well, and her grammar, punctuation and spelling sometimes leave something to be desired. So, she writes her letters and shares them with me, and I fix them up. Sometimes I also significantly change the content. Usually she agrees, but not always, and she can always see exactly what I did and easily revert what she doesn't like. Often, we do these steps in parallel, with her still writing the end of the letter while I'm fixing up the beginning. Sometimes I'm even working right behind her, fixing up just a few words behind her.
Perhaps it's just my life, but about the only "documents" I write which aren't collaborative in at least some degree are slashdot posts and the like, so I find that I'd nearly always rather use Docs than anything else. Even if the feature set is rather anemic compared to a "real" office suite (though getting less so all the time).

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Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Anthony+Mouse · 2012-02-22 14:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

No one's come up with a better system that capitalist republics yet, and the alternatives are all horrible: Marxism, feudalism, etc.
I came up with one once. It looks a lot like capitalism, but not exactly.
If you think about why capitalism works, it's because power has competition. (And when you think about where it fails, it's where power doesn't have competition.) Because where there is competition, efficient companies succeed and inefficient companies fail.
But you can have competition without greed. Suppose you have corporations chartered for purposes other than maximizing shareholder value: For example, if the goal of a corporation is to engage in commercial activity and use the profits to operate soup kitchens and homeless shelters, or to fund basic scientific research, or to break into consolidated markets with high barriers to entry, whether or not doing those things is profit-maximizing. So for example, you have a drug company like Pfizer, but instead of having shareholders who take profits as dividends, they use the profits to subsidize healthcare for the poor.
And I always wondered why no one had ever tried that before. I actually found out the answer last year. They did try that. In the early 20th century. And it worked. And one of the reasons it worked really well was that if you weren't a profit-seeking corporation, you could incorporate as a non-profit and you didn't have to pay taxes, so all the money that a for-profit corporation would have paid in taxes could instead go to either expanding the enterprise or to doing a larger amount of unprofitable charity work. Which made the IRS very unhappy -- if not-for-profit corporations start successfully taking over industries and using the margins to do charity, the government loses out on a lot of tax revenue. So they banned it. They prohibited tax exempt organizations from doing business commercially in order to raise money to do their charity work.
So you can still do it, but you have to organize as a taxable corporation. And then you have no way of raising the initial capital, because investors will want an ownership stake (which makes you a traditional for-profit corporation again) and donors want a tax deduction (which the IRS disallows if you're a commercial enterprise, profit-seeking or otherwise). So those kinds of corporations effectively no longer exist.
But they could if we wanted them to and changed the law.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by hitmark · 2012-02-22 15:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

except that the kind of "marxism" that they tried to implement in Russia and elsewhere (honestly, China and later are reinterpreted "Stalinism") may well be quite contrary to what Marx actually envisioned.
First off, the envisioned a nation like Germany, that was heavily industrialized via capitalism, to be the starting point. Not Russia that at the time was mostly still agrarian.
Also, he did not envision centralized state control. More likely he envisioned worker run factories and such. That is, the board room was not filled up by shareholders and venture capitalists, but the actual workers of the factory, bank and so on.
So in essence the transition would be form a capitalist run work environment to a worker run work environment. That is, the workers would be working for their own benefit, not some suit and cigar overlooking it all from a posh office.

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Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by LordLimecat · 2012-02-22 15:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

You dont think the free hotmail is also looking for keywords to send you ads? You dont think Bing gathers info on you for advertising?
I love how Microsoft tries to pretend theyre not in the advertising industry, but its not terribly convincing. At least google is up front about it.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by drkstr1 · 2012-02-22 16:03 · Score: 5, Informative

Go to File -> See Revision history.
I've been using Docs like a hipster... before it was cool... and it was love at first sight! I have also set up multiple small businesses on Google Apps, and have heard nothing but good things from them. IMHO, it really is a superior model to passing a file around like a chump.

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Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by BenJCarter · 2012-02-22 17:04 · Score: 2

Anthony, I think your idea is quite noble. In a perfectly altruistic world it might work. The problem, in this world full of real people, is capital. What motivates people to invest it? Do you want to invest your hard earned cash in a company that feeds more homeless, or one that rewards your risk with more money in your pocket?

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Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Kagetsuki · 2012-02-22 17:43 · Score: 3, Informative

I use LibreOffice AND Google Docs for business. Google Docs is great for collaboration and you can import/export to LO easily. For final formatting I use LO though. Google Docs has some weird issues with images still and there are some random tweaky things too (font handling, bullets in lists have tweaky formatting issues) but in the end it's only little things and they're easy to fix before you print them or package them in a pdf.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Omestes · 2012-02-22 18:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

Because you don't get to be the size of Pfizer by giving up all your profits.
For the sake of argument; why does anyone need to be the size of Pfizer? Or, to provide a more clearly negative example, Monsanto? I actually find that to be a flaw in the system.

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Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by mwvdlee · 2012-02-22 20:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

In judging any political systems viability, you should not look at how the system would operate according to the proposed model.
You must look at how corrupt and unscrupulous sociopaths could abuse the system to the detriment of others.
Most proposed political systems can only deal with a very small percentage of citizens undermining the system, in reality much more people will disagree with atleast some parts of it.
IMHO, political systems like marxism and communism seem to work well in small communes of a few dozen willing people, but they fail when introducing enough unwilling people into the system, as has been widely demonstrated.

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Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by bazorg · 2012-02-22 22:58 · Score: 4, Interesting

If you are interested in "alternative" types of organisations, be sure to check out the Social Enterprise movement in the UK. Essentially, they are like cooperatives. They are meant to be profitable from selling their services, but a part of the profit needs to be reinvested in the community where they belong. www.socialenterprise.org.uk/
Some of these organisations are healthcare companies, started by doctors and nurses who get their funding from the National Health Service for the first year or 2 and then are expected to become self-sufficient from their sales to individuals and to the NHS. The NHS becomes smaller and hopefully easier to manage, and the local branches independently provide health care within their community.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by brunes69 · 2012-02-22 23:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

With HTML5 browsers, Google Docs works offline now. You don't have to worry about connectivity or Google going down when working on something critical. For al intents and purposes, it is an offline suite - so I fail to see why someone should not "trust Google Docs to run a business" any more than Microsoft Office.
Secondly - there is no "Gmail man" scanning your mail. It is just a computer. And if you think there is no simmilar algorithm analyzing your hotmail, yahoo mail, or nay other webmail - you have rocks in your heard. If it is really that big of a problem, then use IMAP, where you have no ads and thus no scanning.
Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by dkf · 2012-02-23 02:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

Some map companies, such as Streetmap or Multimap, would counter that point, arguing loudly that Google unfairly drove them out of business (or to a significantly lower level of business) by promoting Google Maps over their services via search, in breach of EU competition law.
I used to use Multimap when finding locations in cities before my first visit to them (little things like hotels, stations, where my conference/business meeting was going to be, etc.) and I found it to be a useful service. However, I switched to using Google not because of any cross-promotion with search, but rather because Google's service was significantly better. It was faster, it used more of the screen, it was more usable in general. Could Multimap have competed? I don't see why not, but they seemed at the time to be technologically resting on their laurels, making it easy for Google's better service to steal their lunch.
The moral of this? Nobody owes you a living. Keep up!

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Re:Stay Classy Microsoft by Omestes · 2012-02-23 03:13 · Score: 2

Yes, scale does come into play, and can be necessary for some types of service, but I think even Pfizer could probably survive being trimmed back (and would probably be better for society in that state). How much does Pfizer spend on socially useless, or even harmful, things? Advertising (BUY VIAGRA, BE HIP!), lobbying, suing the crap out of other companies and individuals, patent trolling and farming, etc... If, as the OP stated, they were forced to be socially responsible (I'm not advocating this, though I agree with the premise, the practice is a bit of a thorny one though), they probably could be just as useful without all the baggage.
Hell Pfizer managed to spend a metric shit-ton of cash inventing a disease, selling it to us, and thus creating an artificial need for Viagra, which is something that only less than 1% of the population might actually need.
The bigger question, though, is the constant need for corporate growth actually necessary? Outside of shareholder value and increasingly silly market forces, does growth actually matter? I'm slowly noticing that in every sector of business you end up with two megacorps, one with a huge market share, the other with a slightly smaller, but nonetheless monolithic, one, and then a couple fringe/niche underdogs. I don't actually know if this is healthy. If capitalism hinges on compitition (as someone in this topic said), then it seems that capitalism's ultimate goal is to swallow itself.
All that said, I again don't quite agree with the main premise. The world would be a better place, probably, if everything turned into a socially oriented non-profit, but doing so would require laws that are pretty disagreeable, and ultimately people do have the right to be greedy as long as their is no direct harm to others. This is fine. I do think we should all find some issue though with the idea that corporations soley exist to make a profit and increase shareholder value, though. Especially since these corporations have the ability to pass laws, and now spend infinite sums of money endorsing friendly politicians. If we want them to be "people", they should have all the same responsibilities as people, and be held to the same moral/ethical standards.

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A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey

Thanks for the entertainment by Daniel+Phillips · 2012-02-22 11:58 · Score: 4, Funny

Sincere thanks to Microsoft of entertaining me. Ranks right up there with Bill's infamous butt wiggle.

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FUD by Missing.Matter · 2012-02-22 12:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

The points the Googlighting video try to make is that Google has an unknown track record with office applications, their products lack features compared to the competition, and they have a track record of starting projects and abandoning them without much warning, especially cloud applications. So when Microsoft asks, "is this a product you want to bet your business on?" while it may be FUD, it's a pertinent question.

Re:FUD by semi-extrinsic · 2012-02-22 12:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

I agree with your sentiment, Google do change/abandon projects quite often. But Microsoft suggesting that with their software, you could never "come into the office one day and the software looks completely different" is quite frankly hilarious to anyone who had to suffer the upgrade from MS Office 2003 to 2007 or 2010.

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Re:FUD by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · 2012-02-22 12:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

I gave a very similar argument to a CEO at a company I was consulting on in the construction of a small datacenter. He wanted all Apple servers because he was sold on the ecosystem. After explaining to him that they also have a track record of abandoning their corporate customers, I was given the okay to deploy an almost completely Linux rack (they have one Exchange server). Like everything else it's a matter of the right tool for the job. I'm not sure if I'd ever trust Google Docs for a business, but in fairness Microsoft is pushing just as hard with their Office Online apps. I will say that Google Docs was quite useful in my last year as an undergrad and in grad school as a colaboration platform.

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Re:FUD by unencode200x · 2012-02-22 12:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

What they're saying is your company chooses when the ugprades are done and can give employees a heads up. Not to mention how they publish betas, have a published roadmap, developer conferences, etc. etc. The other argument is that you only have to pay for Office once not on a month-to-month basis. Not to knock GoogleApps, but who's to say they don't raise the price next week?

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Perfect is the enemy of good.
Re:FUD by bgarcia · 2012-02-22 12:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

they have a track record of starting projects and abandoning them without much warning

Sure, Google will sometimes abandon projects that they offer for free to users. But Google Apps for Business is a product that they sell. They won't be abandoning a revenue stream like that any time soon.

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Re:FUD by Tanktalus · 2012-02-22 12:27 · Score: 4, Funny

But Microsoft suggesting that with their software, you could never "come into the office one day and the software looks completely different" is quite frankly hilarious to anyone who had to suffer the upgrade from MS Office 2003 to 2007 or 2010.
What are you talking about? Microsoft is completely in the right on this one. That type of rollout would take weeks at least. More if you have a second employee!
Re:FUD by scdeimos · 2012-02-22 12:28 · Score: 4, Informative

What they're saying is your company chooses when the ugprades are done and can give employees a heads up.
And all that's off the table with Office 365 - upgrades happen when Microsoft wants them to.
Re:FUD by DMUTPeregrine · 2012-02-22 12:38 · Score: 2

Google Labs has a track record of starting projects and then abandoning them without much warning, especially cloud applications. Google Labs is the group that puts out all the "beta" stuff. They often release projects to the public to test if there will be wide acceptance. If the test projects aren't accepted they get killed off. Other projects are widely used, like gmail and Google Docs, and they lose their beta tags and don't seem to get killed off. The problem with cloud services is that there is never a guarantee the cloud provider will be there tomorrow. This is just as much an issue for MS's cloud services as it is for Google's. MS also has a local office suite. There's also Libre Office to consider.

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Re:FUD by unencode200x · 2012-02-22 12:39 · Score: 2

Well, I'm not directly involved but our company manages Office 365 and Google Apps for other companies (we're an outsourced IT company). Microsoft has been very, very proactive on the ugprades sides. Even letting customers push their upgrades (moving from BPOS to O365) by six months or more. However, it remains to be seen how they'll do with O365. Also, O365 is server components only (SharePoint, Exchange, etc.). The client-side software you use with it Outlook, Word, Excel, etc. doesn't necessarily have to be upgraded at the same time or at all. for example you can use Office 2007 if you really want to.

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Perfect is the enemy of good.
Re:FUD by semi-extrinsic · 2012-02-22 12:40 · Score: 3, Informative

Fair points. But we should really compare apples and apples here. MS's own Office 365 (which this is an advert for, I think) also auto-updates on a 90 day schedule according to this.

What I think is MS's problem with Office 365, however, is that it falls between two chairs. It is not as powerful as real Office, for businesses wanting the power of, say, Excel and Access. It is also not free, so more casual users (say, a barista who owns his own coffee shop) would rather have Google Docs for free. Or, again, she would buy a copy of Office Home&Business.

Seems to me that the "Medium/Large business that solely wants to do Office in the cloud", which is what this is designed for, is pretty much a mythical creature.

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Re:FUD by Missing.Matter · 2012-02-22 12:52 · Score: 2

Sure, that's the counter claim. But when you remember Google makes 96% of their revenue (and probably close to 99% of their net income) from advertising, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that Google could pack up their Google Apps for Business division (or any other division really) at the drop of a hat, and not really feel the blow. On the other hand, Microsoft's Business Division earned them 52% of their net income last year. You can bet your ass they're not going anywhere.
Re:FUD by pseudofrog · 2012-02-22 13:31 · Score: 4, Funny

...is that it falls between two chairs

I wonder if anyone at Microsoft is capable of moving these chairs?
Re:FUD by Anthony+Mouse · 2012-02-22 14:29 · Score: 2

What they're saying is your company chooses when the ugprades are done and can give employees a heads up.
Only to a very limited extent. When Office 2007 came out, the next thing everybody knew, people from other companies are sending them .docx files they couldn't open. Then you're running around having to install the compatibility pack on everybody's machine, which doesn't actually work properly on a lot of files (and tends to convert formulas into uneditable pictures). The only real solution to that is to go out and pay for Office 2007 and retrain all your users. The fact that you might have a period of time in which to do it (or not, if the compatibility pack's failings are causing immediate problems) is little comfort -- it's an undesired additional cost whether you do it immediately or a year later.
Re:FUD by flimflammer · 2012-02-22 16:10 · Score: 2

You're comparing apples and oranges. Microsoft can end support for Microsoft Bob and that won't affect your ability to use the copy you already have. As for Plays4Sure, users were able to recover their media before the licensing servers went offline. If you can figure out how to use Google services after they've stopped supporting them, I'd love to hear it. You'd put all our minds at ease.
Re:FUD by LordLucless · 2012-02-22 18:10 · Score: 2

So was Microsoft in their videos. To say that because Google pulled Wave (a beta, experimental system that was never really picked up) means that it's dangerous to use Gmail or Google docs is no less disingenuous than saying because Microsoft pulled Plays4Sure (a small-yield system that never really took off) it's dangerous to use Hotmail.
Comparing a stable, mature product to an experimental one is an apples to oranges comparison - yet it was the basis of Microsoft's FUD.

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Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face

You by M0j0_j0j0 · 2012-02-22 12:00 · Score: 2

Have to love the american way of advertising!! The Gmail man was kinda funny though. They would had a better effect with, " So Mr. Anderson you've been searching for Hemorroids!!!"

A beautiful hypocrisy! by j33px0r · 2012-02-22 12:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

Ok, Microsoft has done countless "evils" in the past and still does, but with that being said, they do a wonderful job of pointing out the privacy issues of Gmail and the risks of implementing Google Apps. Googlighting was an excellent and humorous video as well.

Maybe if Google and MS duke it out enough, all of their little wrong-doings will get pointed out, fixed, and society may actually advance! Or perhaps we will just sit around and watch some mudslinging while our privacy is further reduced. I'm feeling pessimistic at the moment and leaning towards the latter.

Not Surprising by wbr1 · 2012-02-22 12:06 · Score: 4, Interesting

While I am not a fan of google's practices of late, how often has Microsoft not been a FUD spewer?
It is ingrained in their culture.

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Silence is a state of mime.

In theory Apple is MS's biggest competitor, but... by Qwavel · 2012-02-22 12:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

you wouldn't know it.

Apple is no longer the company that MS had to prop up (with a cash investment and an MS Office port) for the pretence of competition - they are now the biggest company in the world.

But MS seems OK with that - they still act like Google is their real competitor. Is it because Google is competing in the online space and Apple isn't? Or is because Apple has enormous margins and MS sees this as a positive development in the industry - whereas Google tends to offer things for free and push MS towards lower margins?

I have no idea, but one of these days MS should get over their Google fixation and start thinking about competing with Apple too.

And BTW, Kudos to Google. One of the reasons I'm a fan of theirs is that they seem to compete fiercely with everyone!

They are like politicians ... by Alain+Williams · 2012-02-22 12:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

who slag off the opposition. What I really want to hear is why they are better, not rude reasons why the opposition is bad. This sort of thing is a complete turn off -- no matter who does it. Mud sticks to the hands of those who throw it.

Re:Bing... by andydread · 2012-02-22 12:18 · Score: 2

... has a video service? Seriously though, it isn't good for one service to weild as much power as youtube over which videos will be promoted to fame and which are left lingering in obscurity.

Better Google than Microsoft. We have seen what Microsoft does when they wield that much power in other areas. One shudders to think what it would be like if youtube was run by Microsoft and Bing was our only choice of a search engine.

But it's not a *person* looking at your mail by walterbyrd · 2012-02-22 12:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

If you are upset about the idea of a computer reading your mail, then how can you justify using email at all?

Does the MS-Word spelling checker "read" your Word documents?

Re:But it's not a *person* looking at your mail by swillden · 2012-02-22 14:38 · Score: 2

So you'd be fine if I scanned all your personal documents and stored on them on my computer.
Unless you run your own mail server, your ISP stores all of your e-mails on their computers. If you do run your own mail server, all of your e-mail transits dozens of machines, and all in cleartext (unless you encrypt -- which no one does). Any of those machines can grab a copy -- and you don't even know who they are and have no privacy commitments from any of them.

I'll just take out the pieces I think someone might want and sell them separately.
Your ISP could be doing that, unless their privacy policy says they don't. Google's policy commits to never selling your data. You may choose not to believe Google, of course, but there certainly isn't any evidence that Google ever has sold your data.

Last I checked the spell checker didn't send the data off to Microsoft when it checked my spelling. If it ever did they would lose all their corporate customers because the use of it would violate privacy laws in many countries.
So, Office 365 is unsellable to corporate customers in said countries? It's also a cloud solution. I think the reality is more nuanced than what you're implying. Google Apps is sold to enterprises around the world, too. I think some of the potential sales run into trouble with laws that state that companies can't ship certain documents out of the country of origin. I suspect that may motivate Google, Microsoft and others to install data centers in those countries, but I don't think it'll completely eliminate enterprise use of cloud services.

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Re:In theory Apple is MS's biggest competitor, but by Mountaineer1024 · 2012-02-22 12:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

Microsoft don't need to compete with Apple.
Microsoft are primarily interested in the corporate market - business and government.
Everything else just flows on with that due to the need to be compatible.

Apple has spoken recently of their inroads into business as a "collateral win", an unintended bonus.
They are putting zero effort into replicating or replacing the core feature set that any large business relies on (exchange, active directory, etc).

The reason that Microsoft is scared of Google is that they are actively attempting to make the underlying system immaterial as the Google services become the compatibility glue.
Who cares if the underlying system is running Windows, OSX, Linux or something else when the end user gets exactly the same experience?

That's what Microsoft is scared of, not a high end device manufacturer that interoperates with them.

Re:In theory Apple is MS's biggest competitor, but by PapayaSF · 2012-02-22 12:22 · Score: 2

Interestingly, OS X Mountain Lion will include some built-in sharing features, and while Vimeo is included, YouTube is not. Ever since Android, Google has not been getting much love from Apple....

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Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot

Re:Really? by Z34107 · 2012-02-22 12:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

Eh, maybe some people out there haven't heard of "targeted advertising." After telling YouTube to e-mail me in Japanese, just for kicks, I started getting some hilarious and kind of creepy ads sent my way. Prior, I saw mostly men's products and electronics.

G-mail isn't the only context they use for ad placement, though. Either way, Google gives me free stuff, and makes my web surfing a bit more surreal. I consider it a fair trade.

Microsoft's video is rather crass, but maybe it'll be educational for someone who wouldn't take the Faustian bargain were they fully informed. It's kind of refreshing seeing advertising based on the relative merits of the respective products rather than "Bud Light Summons Women," but on the other hand... Office 365.

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DATABASE WOW WOW

YouTube by slasho81 · 2012-02-22 12:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

I love it that Microsoft uses YouTube (owned by Google) for this. The use of negative ads is tasteless. Then again, it's an election year so it's fashionable.

Re:battles among emperors by forkfail · 2012-02-22 12:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

More like guild rivalry.

Not in the MMROPG sense, where guilds are glamorized, but rather, in the medical sense, where you had to be a member of a guild to practice your trade or you lost not only the fruits of your labors but body parts as well, and which feuded with each other over their domains.

These days, we call them mega-corporations, and instead of guild charters, we've got copyright and patent laws, but the model of how the field does things would be recognizable by a stone mason from the sixteenth century.

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Check your premises.

Just watching the videos... by Higgins_Boson · 2012-02-22 12:25 · Score: 2

Just watching the videos and reading comments on them. Wow... this SERIOUSLY looks like it is backfiring for Microsloth.

Re:Bing... by Grishnakh · 2012-02-22 12:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

According to a YouTube video I stumbled upon earlier today, if you buy a Verizon Android phone, Bing will be your only choice of a search engine on that device thanks to a half-billion dollar deal MS made with Verizon.

I guess I won't be getting my next phone with Verizon...

Yeah, That's Because by Greyfox · 2012-02-22 12:38 · Score: 5, Interesting

Moble's the next market and Android's already beating Microsoft there. Not to mention that if Google decided to bring Android to a PC environment it would start up immediately with easy access to all the apps in the Anrdroid Marketplace. No other MS competitor has ever brought that many potential ready-to-run applications with their environment. Google could trounce Microsoft across all the markets they service, if Google were so inclined. That idea is bound to be making some sphincters clench in Redmond.

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I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

Re:In theory Apple is MS's biggest competitor, but by andydread · 2012-02-22 12:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

It is because MS is still fixated on stifling open source software from the market place. They see Google as a HUGE threat because they see Google as having let the open source horse out of the barn and now you have companies such as Samsung, Motorola, Amazon, Barnes and Noble among others that are deploying this on devices all over the place. They don't see Apple as a threat that way. Microsoft has always wanted to see their OS on everything ....everything. The widespread use of open source in the marketplace is Microsoft's biggest nightmare.

Re:Bing... by nschubach · 2012-02-22 12:42 · Score: 2

I just bought a Droid 4... Google search provider.

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Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.

Re:Bing... by sexconker · 2012-02-22 13:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

According to a YouTube video I stumbled upon earlier today, if you buy a Verizon Android phone, Bing will be your only choice of a search engine on that device thanks to a half-billion dollar deal MS made with Verizon.

I guess I won't be getting my next phone with Verizon...

According to the phone in my pocket, Google is the only choice of a search engine on that device thanks to a fundamental conflict of interest between the Android part of Google and the search part of Google.

What's your point?

Sueing by hobarrera · 2012-02-22 13:06 · Score: 2

Since all these major corps are so happy to sue each other for every stupid thing (including patents), isn't this sue-worthy? I don't live in USA, so I can't be sure in detail, but in Argentina, google/gmail would pretty much be able to prove that MS is degrading their image, and making them loose potential money. Isn't this so in USA as well? I'm pretty sure it probably is.
An, since some of the thing implied are actually non-true, there's a major point there.

Besides, since when do companies need a REAL motive to sue each other.

Re:Bing... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-22 13:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

And Windows in the only choice of an OS to run MS Office on, thanks to a "fundamental conflict of interest" between the Office part of MS and the OS part of MS

Office has been available for Apple computers for quite awhile.

Re:In theory Apple is MS's biggest competitor, but by swillden · 2012-02-22 14:30 · Score: 2

The reason that Microsoft is scared of Google is that they are actively attempting to make the underlying system immaterial as the Google services become the compatibility glue. Who cares if the underlying system is running Windows, OSX, Linux or something else when the end user gets exactly the same experience?

This.

Microsoft can compete with Apple, because the two companies use roughly the same model. Apple prefers to sell hardware and more or less give the software away, while Microsoft sells the software, but it's basically the same deal to consumers. Even more important, both companies build their business around the lock-in game, making consumers pick between the two ecosystems and to buy (with $) into one or the other. The friction provided by lock-in means that neither has to worry about being out-innovated in the short term. They may have ups and downs, but the billions will keep flowing. It's a comfortable playing field, and one that Microsoft has long proven they can dominate.

But Google wants to change the game entirely by making the operating system irrelevant. You can argue about whether or not Google's services have their own form of lock-in and change-resisting friction, but the main point is that Google's approach makes the hardware and software platform of the end-user's device irrelevant. Google wants the web to become a powerful but standardized application platform so that lock-ins at the level of the CPU, operating system, or even the browser go away, and everyone has to compete at the application level. That game is not one in which Microsoft will have many of their traditional advantages.

Personally, I think Microsoft still has huge advantages in a web-platform world. Microsoft employs a lot of really smart people and has huge cash reserves. Microsoft also has a pretty good start on building out the massive infrastructure needed to compete on "web scale". So I think MS has plenty of chances to continue making a lot of money even if Google "wins" and OS becomes irrelevant, but they'll have to work harder for it than they're accustomed to doing.

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If you had actually read Marx by radarradar · 2012-02-22 14:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you had actually read Marx you'd know that he avoided laying out a blueprint for an alternative system. There are multiple reasons for that: his dislike of utopian socialists, his focus on analysis & critique of capitalism, & his hegelianism come to mind right away. He tended to think that the Paris Commune got a lot of stuff right. It's true that some of the problems of the analysis negatively influenced actually existing socialism, but still, there's no plan for the Soviet state in Capital or anything like that.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-02-22 15:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Who makes these ads? by epp_b · 2012-02-22 15:29 · Score: 2

How is it that one of the wealthiest corporations in the world always manages to find the most pathetic ad producers?

This is hysterically lame (just like all their other campaigns), and not in a self-aware, ironic sort of way; more of a Microsoft is that "special" kid in the class and doesn't realize it ... sort of way.

Sorry Microsoft, you're not the cool kid and you never will be.

Re:Bing... by LordLimecat · 2012-02-22 15:33 · Score: 2

MS Office runs on Mac, and has for the longest time.

Re:In theory Apple is MS's biggest competitor, but by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-02-22 16:00 · Score: 2

Yes, I have. Now, care to explain what about that whole Metro business looks like it's tailored to "corporate market"?

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-02-22 16:12 · Score: 4, Informative

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Bing... by dionye · 2012-02-23 05:32 · Score: 2

According to the phone in my pocket, Google is the only choice of a search engine on that device thanks to a fundamental conflict of interest between the Android part of Google and the search part of Google.

according to the android phone in my pocket, I can still bing through the google broswer and the bing app. unless it was really google search with different skin.....oh wait.

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Microsoft's Anti-Google Video Campaign

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