Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
Now, who's more evil? Google or Microsoft?
Apple
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Is it a "Smear Campaign" if it's true?
That's a big "if." In this case it isn't true: "Reading" implies a "person reading your email." Google parses email to place ads. But so what? So does Microsoft and every other Email provider on earth. They may be parsing it for a different reason, but they are doing the exact same thing. If parsing is "reading" then you'd have a point. But it isn't, so you don't. Parsing != to Reading. Or, to put it another way: If Google is "reading your email" at Gmail so is Microsoft at Office 365 Online, because all spam protection services parse email and microsoft advertises their Office 365 service as including excellent "Microsoft Forefront" security.
Build quality backlinks by guest blogging.
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.
> Google DOES read your email, and we learned from the Patreus affair that access to that email is handed over without a warrant as well.
> Are we living in a police state yet?
Equating the two is about as disingenuous as the MS campaign, and painting Google as the state patsy in comparison to MS is equally dishonest.
First, showing contextual ads based on e-mails and handing over e-mails to the state have nothing to do with each other. MS hands over e-mails to - the only difference is that they don't fight against it.
Google fighting against state censorship in China and against invasion of privacy in the U.S. probably doesn't go far enough for you, but MS doesn't fight against them at all. In fact, when Google was fighting China, MS say it as an opportunity to gain some market share by agreeing to do the stuff that Google was fighting.
Has anyone looked at the Privacy link at the bottom of the login screen for outlook.com?
http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/default.mspx
Quoting here: "Uses of Information: Additional Details
We use the information we collect to provide the services you request. Our services may include the display of personalized content and advertising.
We use your information to inform you of other products or services offered by Microsoft and its affiliates, and to send you relevant survey invitations related to Microsoft services.
We do not sell, rent, or lease our customer lists to third parties. In order to help provide our services, we occasionally provide information to other companies that work on our behalf."
So they can personalize content and advertising, send you offers, and provide it to other companies.
s/Google Mail/outlook.com/ and the claims appear to be the same.
Why would you want ads when reading your email at all?
I don't want, them, but I am willing to accept them because I am an adult, and I know that there is no Santa Claus. Corporations don't provide services out of the goodness of their heart. The ads pay for the "free" email, and also help pay for Google's research into autonomous vehicles, improved search technology, etc. So I accept them, occasionally click on them, and sometimes even buy something.
This seems to be horrible mental gymnastics to try to maintain "Google good!" fanboism.
Expecting something for nothing is being childish. Grow up.
No.
Google employees weren't reading the email. The US government now has a stupid law that when a law enforcement agency requests email, companies are required to hand it over without a warrant. That didn't mean anyone from Google was reading it ahead of time.
Someone should contest this (along with warantless wiretapping, GPS tracking, etc) to the Supreme Court because this behavior should be unconstitutional. Blame the executive branch for massively overstepping their authority.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Kind of a forced scenario there. Why can't we have good e-mail without advertisements as an option? Google's service is fine, and understanding their ToS means you understand you're going to have ads; that's the nature of the net right now. Doesn't mean you have to like it and that we must comply with this model.
GMail supports IMAP. Which doesn't have ads.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Just in case anybody is dumb enough to listen to you, no, that is nonsense. The 'basic' interface is just that, an *interface*, it has no effect on how Google's servers handle your mail, just on how it is displayed to you.
Not that I care, it's a post-privacy society, get over it.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Microsoft actually does the exact same thing. So where is the 1000 post thread about it?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I can honestly say that I have never made a single grammatical error in Portuguese. Not once.
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.
Yes, and we all have a "sex inspector" that goes to every house and takes notes. If we don't have enough quality sex, we'll receive "death points". These will be taken into account by the death panels when they decide if we're entitled to medical treatment in a public hospital.
But don't worry, we have plenty of time to watch TV during our 6 month vacation. And we spend the rest of the year on strike, so we get to watch a lot of it. It's just that we don't have Cheetos and Budwiser while watching TV. Instead we have goat cheese and red wine.