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Leaked Microsoft Video Parodies Chrome Ad
First time accepted submitter Stratus311 writes "An article from The Verge shows a video leaked from Microsoft that parodies Google's Chrome ad. From the article: 'Microsoft and Google have been locked in a war of words over a YouTube Windows Phone app, but in the midst of the arguments a new Scroogled ad has emerged. Designed to be an internal-only video, a copy has somehow managed to find its way onto the web right in the middle of Google's I/O developer conference.'"
"Somehow" leaked.
I feel like Microsoft is truly correct with this video. Google is monetizing you, and worse yet, tracking everything you do in unseen scale.
At least with Microsoft I know they will value my privacy. I pay for their product and that's it. But Google's business model is around the monetarizion of its users.
Did you know that just like Zynga (the facebook game company), Google uses professional human psychologies when building their services. They don't just track, but they go directly after the science of human behavior. All done in a warm, fuzzy feel that Google is somehow your very best friend. It's entirely psychological.
Stop calling quiet press releases "leaks" FFS. We all know people yawn at press releases so they call it a leak and you look like an investigative journalist. Everyone wins right? Bleh fuck it. Slashdot has officially joined The Great Stupiding.
Apple wants to sell you hardware, services and content. You pay for everything.
Microsoft wants to sell you hardware, services and content. You pay for everything.
Google wants you to use their services. You're being sold to pay for everything.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
It just seems like MS is jealous that Google is making money hand over fist. Microsoft tried to do the same thing Google did. They have a search engine and advertising business. They just aren't as good at it as Google. Tracking is pretty independent of what browser you use anyways. Besides, people don't give a shit that they are being monetized. People still use facebook don't they? And people do realize, to some probably limited extent, that facebook is all about monetizing them.
Quick! Put it on YouTube so everyone ... can... see... it.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I think Microsoft makes lots of these internal videos.
I worked as a temp at Microsoft a few years back, and there was a screen in the building that showed videos on loops. There was a pretty cool ad showing the wonders of an "ultra-mobile PC" being used in tablet mode, for example. (It didn't mention cost or battery life, just the cool stuff you could do.)
Anyway I saw a video, something like ten minutes long, that was a parable about outsourcing IT: This C-level guy (maybe the CEO but I'm not sure) wakes up and starts his day; his car comes by to pick him up, but it isn't his usual driver. "Where's my usual driver?" "He's... not here." The driver introduces himself as "Charles" and the C-level guy immediately starts calling him "Chuck" (which annoyed me right there). They get to the office building and all the people are gone. C-level guy: "Where is everyone?" Charles: "You forgot them." It turns out that the company decided to outsource IT to save money, not thinking about the effect this would have on the workers, so now this is a magical "A Christmas Carol" sort of situation where Charles is taking the C-level guy on a tour to show him what is bad now. A sales guy lost a sale because he didn't have a Windows Mobile smartphone. Other things... the one I remember is that they visited the server room, and it was empty, because the IT was outsourced to the cloud (this was pre-Azure so cloud meant non-Microsoft and therefore bad). A kid, maybe nine years old, rolled slowly past on a skateboard. "Who's that?" asked the C-level guy. "Oh, that's Linux." At the very end, the C-level guy wakes up for real and of course the people aren't missing, and he bumps into Charles who it seems is actually in his IT department. "Oh, can we get those Windows Mobile phones now?" Happy ending! Heart-warming!
I've searched YouTube a few times to see if this was ever leaked, but I don't know what it was called and I've never found it.
Thet post troll has unintentionally stumbled on something interesting.
See how Google started removing borders around ads and made the shading super light in order to get ad clicks from older people and people with bad monitor calibration:
http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it [ppcblog.com]or-maybe-not/
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/ [blumenthals.com]
Those carefully and scientifically calibrated colors must be worth atleast few hundred million of extra revenue from their cash cow by making gullible people click on ads mistaking them for real search results.
"Study:Contrast sensitivity gradually decreases with age"
http://www.eyeworld.org/article.php?sid=818&strict=0&morphologic=0&query=
This space for rent.
From the video, Microsoft wants you to think that Google is an evil oppressor that takes money out of your pocket by selling data on your behavior. They also want you to think that Google is "watching" you like some nosey neighbor who rather than blabbing your secrets all over town, will instead sell all your dirty secrets to the highest bidder.
And hey, if you think of it like that, it's pretty scary.
But seriously. Have you ever tried to actually sell your personal data to someone? Like, if you went to Starbucks and said, "Hey, I like coffee, I'm single, have a full time job, and disposable income. I'll let you tell me how great Starbucks is if you just pay me a dollar!" I'm sure that they'd probably look at you with some understandable confusion. Nothing is worth more than you can sell it for. That's simply the reality of economics. So your personal information generally has 0 monetary value to you and would probably cost you more to sell than it would cost you in time and energy to affect that sale.
Google is providing you a service. You're "paying" for that service by allowing Google to monetize your personal information ON YOUR BEHALF. It's a sort of barter agreement. Google will give you something at no monetary cost in exchange for the opportunity to sell your data to third parties. They're not selling your emails. They're not selling your text messages. They're not "reading" your data in any real sense (no actual person ever sees your data without an appropriate reason). They're effectively acting as your agent to monetize your demographic information. And rather than paying you in cash, they're paying you in services.
This is actually no different than how broadcast television works. They use companies like Nielsen to determine aggregate demographic information on the viewership for a given show. Then they sell that information to third parties (advertisers), who supply the necessary capital to run the TV channel and produce new content, which the network then gives to you for "free". Google's model is identical. Just because Google can fine-tune that demographic information does not alter the basic structure of the model.
All the FUD about "big data" relies on some over-zealous anthropomorphization of large scale data processing systems. Microsoft likes to use phrases like "Google reads your email" to scare you into thinking that there's some overworked engineers at Google that do nothing all day except sit around and chuckle about those emails you sent to your wife. But that just doesn't happen. It's scare tactics put out by people who have either never worked with large data sets or are purposefully obfuscating the truth with the intent to scare you.
In the end, you ultimately have a choice: You can simply stop using Google's services and thereby refuse to opt-in to their tracking. Humankind lasted millions of years without Google. You can avoid Google today if you don't want to pay for their services. But to freak out and say that Google is somehow operating nefariously by monetizing their services in a way that doesn't cost you cash out of pocket comes across as a bit obtuse.