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MS Targets Google With Another Smear Campaign
walterbyrd writes with news that Microsoft's PR department has started a campaign to convince Gmail users that Google reads your personal emails, referring to Google's automated method of scanning emails for keywords to generate supposedly relevant advertising.
"The gist of the scare campaign is that Google is a scary, scary company that reads your private emails in order to send you targeted ads. 'Even if you don't use Gmail, if you send email to someone who does, Google goes through those emails to generate advertising revenue too,' Microsoft warns in material sent to reporters. Oh, and Microsoft points out that six class-action lawsuits have been filed against Google over this issue, and asks people to sign a petition 'to tell Google to stop going through your personal email messages.'"
Is it a "Smear Campaign" if it's true?
Pretty "slanted" summary, but I guess this is Slashdot and the story is about Microsoft.
Now, who's more evil? Google or Microsoft? Hard to tell around here sometimes...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The best kind of propaganda is true, and that's what this is. Obviously Microsoft neglects to tell you about all of their invasions of your privacy, but that doesn't make Google's any less true.
Google does scan your emails for keywords. That information may be stored or revealed in any number of ways.
I think it's more than a bit disingenuous because the video has this person's eyes superimposed over your e-mail while mischievous music plays in the background. We all know that it's not a person reading the e-mails, it's software doing latent semantic indexing or some such algorithm.
They might not be lying but they are deceiving. Tell me how my Hotmail knows how to classify incoming e-mails as spam again? OH! You're running a Bayesian classification algorithm and building word statistics out of my e-mail?! They're reading my e-mails! Cue judging eyeballs over my e-mail with corny music.
Note: I'm not defending Google but I'm pretty sure that some type of software runs some sort of algorithm on your e-mails if you go through any reputable major e-mail provider. Hell, my debian postfix server is attached to a bunch of algorithmic open source programs to do just that!
My work here is dung.
Does your automated scanning and classification collect detailed statistics about conversation and subject matters to be used in a virtual dossier of all of your activities across the entire internet? The answer is obviously not.
But, we know well that this is EXACTLY what Google is doing. That it is automated is, to me even more scary than a person watching. That it's only used for ads(today), is annoying. That it could and likely will be used for God knows what in the future is the real disturbing bit.
Is it a "Smear Campaign" if it's true?
Well, it's not entirely true. I think most people consider the definition of reading to mean "looked" at and that it is implicitly a human that is reading your e-mail in this case. The eyes superimposed in the first video imply this. What's actually happening is that your e-mail is being loaded into memory and parsed to build an index associated with some key that is associated with you and that is being stored. This data is then used to serve targeted ads. Do you really think that a person is involved at any point so far? Do you really think there's a Google employee looking over raw table data and rubbing one out when he sees that "ky jelly" is associated with user 57234765235 at a rate of 0.0054% of the time with a high precision value? Really? Show me a mail service provider that neither loads your e-mail into memory (alias "reads" it) nor stores it in a database and I'll show you extraterrestrial beings.
Pretty "slanted" summary, but I guess this is Slashdot and the story is about Microsoft.
Really? Where are Google's commercials of equal proportions? I guarantee you they would make for a story just like this.
Now, who's more evil? Google or Microsoft? Hard to tell around here sometimes...
Just because one evil is smearing another evil of less, equal or greater proportions doesn't make it not a smear campaign! This is exactly what it is! Disingenuous advertising meant to unduly spread uncertainty and deceit! How does Microsoft detect spam? The same damn way!
My work here is dung.
It IS a smear campaign. Tech Crunch and Read Write are trying to smear Microsoft for pointing out the truth.
Microsoft is experiencing the first stages of a death spiral now that their entry into mobile and tablet markets is a dismal failure and they have done nothing to boost PC enthusiasm. All Microsoft can rely on know is their services, however Bing is now in 5th place for search engines. Hotmail is largely used by people that wanted a second email for stuff they know will spam them, and just converting it to Outlook doesn't make it any less likely people will use it for their primary email.
I really don't care what Google does with a collection of keywords collected in my email. Nobody at Google is personally reading my email, and even so, what of it? Had there been even one single case of a Google employee abusing the information gained from scanning emails to relate to advertising then I could fully back Microsoft's campaign, but its just not the case.
Personally all Microsoft is going to have for customers is a bunch of conspiracy theory nuts and people significant paranoia issues. If this is the kind of user base you want to cultivate by this kind of smear campaign, go right ahead, but I doubt it will save Microsoft in the long run.
The only thing Google should do about this is ignore it. I would rather have a user base of smart rational individuals any day, so let Microsoft bleed the crazies away from Google.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Probably that Google and Microsoft resemble each other in many substantive ways, including a declining respect for user privacy.
Google can get away with it, because they're our favorite company around here. If Microsoft did the same thing there'd be a 1000 post thread here about it.
No, it's negative publicity what's illegal. If you want people to buy your stuff, promote it. Don't put the others down. This is simply pathetic and demonstrates how desperate Microsoft is.
Google might even change it's policy and let humans read your e-mails.
So might Microsoft in their cloud hosting service! ...Your point?
You gave them permission. How do do you know what google will do int he next ten years?
Once again you gave the same permission to Microsoft, specifically the clause that lets them change TOS at will with your only recourse being to stop using the service.
Maybe some credit agency will pay them $100 per user account to see all your e-mails.
Mean while microsoft is actually promising in their user agreement that they will never ever do that to you. There's thus a big difference.
Of course, that same user agreement also give Microsoft the option of changing those rules at their convenience, and the burden is on you to discover the change, not on them to reveal it.
Who did what now?
Microsoft actually does the exact same thing. So where is the 1000 post thread about it?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
In the states, our foremost vital constitutional right is that of free speech, which means you can say that your competition sucks if you like. Or not say it. Or say yours is great. Or say both. Or neither.
What kind of fucked up ambiguous, selective, and arbitrary system of oppression do you have over there?
One where corporations don't get absolute free rein to pollute our minds with all kinds of ambiguous, selective, arbitrary and oppressive bullshit.
Wrong. I am the supplier of the inputs for the product that is being packaged by Google and sold to advertisers, and Gmail is (one of many parts of) the payment Google provides to me in return for providing those inputs.
If I am not satisfied that the payment is sufficient value for what Google is asking in exchange, I stop providing the inputs and reject the payment.