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.'"

Comments

MS is right, it *is* creepy

[crazyjj]

Much as I hate to side with MS (okay, I do like my Xbox), they've got a point on this one, even if they're doing it for all the wrong reasons. I do find it really fucking creepy that gmail is parsing my private email, no matter what their justification. I would hate to be conducting a search at work in front of my boss and have a bunch of "Hey, you're gay, so check this out!" advertising pop up because I sent some highly personal emails to a gay partner. Not to mention the fact that since they've established that they have the tech to parse emails for advertising, you know the government is going to come calling (probably already have) to make them parse emails for "national security" too. Fuck that noise.

Now go ahead and mod me down for daring to defend MS on slashdot. But you may want to think about this the next time google returns an ad that seems to know WAY too much about your personal life.