Scroogled, my ass

According to Alex Kantrowitz at AdAge, Microsoft’s Google-bashing Scroogled ads work. As much as I detest Google’s (possibly actionable) insistence on scanning every inbound and outbound Gmail message for ad-triggering keywords, Microsoft has just as many skeletons — albeit in different closets — and the Microsoft transgressions are getting worse, not better.

Attack ads like the Scroogled campaign belong in dirty political mudfests at the lowest end of the gene pool, not in the computer industry where the average level of intelligence arguably approaches room temperature. American politics has degraded to the point where attack ads are indistinguishable from news broadcasts. Let’s hope the computer industry doesn’t fall into the same tar pit, ushered by Steve Ballmer’s handpicked Executive VP of Sewage, Mark Penn.

So far, Google has refrained from slinging mud back at the ‘Softies, but I wonder how much longer its reserve will hold.

Here’s how AdAge characterizes the effectiveness of the Google-bashing, Microsoft-sponsored scroogled.com website:

Once viewers do hit Scroogled.com, data collected for Microsoft by Answers Research show a 45 percent favorability gap in favor of Google contracting to just 5 percent. Data collected by Answers up until this summer also show the likelihood of someone recommending Google to a friend drop by 10 percent, as opposed to a 7 percent increase for Bing, after watching the ad.

“The Scroogled campaign is having a huge impact as consumers learn the stark difference between what Google says and what Google does,” wrote a Microsoft spokesman in an email. Scroogled is now on its sixth wave of ads, which have been supported collectively with $10 million dollars in spending, according to a person familiar with the campaign. They also persist despite the recent revelations about the NSA’s widespread surveillance activities, something Microsoft has been tied to.

Microsoft hasn’t bothered to take on Yahoo Mail — perhaps “Yahoogled” doesn’t have the same advertising ring — but Yahoo’s just as up front about its snooping as Google. From the Yahoo Mail Additional Terms of Service posting:

Yahoo’s automated systems scan and analyze all incoming and outgoing communications content sent and received from your account … to, without limitation, provide personally relevant product features and content, to match and serve targeted advertising and for spam and malware detection and abuse protection. By scanning and analyzing such communications content, Yahoo collects and stores the data. Unless expressly stated otherwise, you will not be allowed to opt out of this feature. If you consent to this ATOS and communicate with non-Yahoo users using the services, you are responsible for notifying those users about this feature.

Here’s the disconnect: Just yesterday, David Pann, general manager of the Microsoft Advertising Search Group, blogged about continued progress for the Yahoo Bing network:

… changes we are making in Bing Ads and on the Yahoo Bing Network are aimed at putting our customers first … and doing all we can to give them a competitive edge … advertiser spend on the Yahoo Bing Network continues to grow compared to Google — it’s up 39 percent year over year while Google’s share of spend is up 18 percent. A lot of that is driven by non-brand click growth, which is up 45 percent on Bing Ads due to investments in our marketplace algorithms. In addition, CPCs fell 2 percent overall as Bing Ads continues to drive improvements that benefit our advertisers. The report says “advertiser ROI has improved on Bing Ads even as the platform has been able to deliver big traffic increases with better ad-matching technology.”

Make no mistake: When Pann talks about “putting our customers first,” he’s talking about advertisers. So Yahoo harvests the keywords and delivers them to Bing, where Microsoft’s engine delivers “big traffic increases with better ad-matching technology.”

Scroogled, my ass.

Microsoft claims, on the scroogled.com website, that “we don’t scan the content of your email to target you with ads.” The Outlook.com main page goes on to say, “Microsoft does not scan your email for the purpose of serving you ads. The ads that you see in your Outlook.com inbox are served to you on the basis of info that you give Microsoft, including the demographic details you provide when you register your account.” But if you dig a little deeper, into the Microsoft Online Privacy Statement, the web’s cast quite a bit wider:

In order to access some Microsoft services, you will be asked to sign in with an email address and password, which we refer to as your Microsoft account. By signing in on one Microsoft site or service, you may be automatically signed into other Microsoft sites and services that use Microsoft account … we receive certain standard information that your browser sends to every website you visit, such as your IP address, browser type and language, access times, and referring Web site addresses. We also use Web site analytics tools on our sites to retrieve information from your browser, including the site you came from, the search engine(s) and the keywords you used to find our site, the pages you view within our site, your browser add-ons, and your browser’s width and height. We use technologies, such as cookies and Web beacons … to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click, and other actions you take on our sites and services. We also deliver advertisements … and provide website analytics tools on non-Microsoft sites and services, and we collect information about page views on these third-party sites as well. When you receive newsletters or promotional email from Microsoft, we may use web beacons, … customized links, or similar technologies to determine whether the e-mail has been opened and which links you click in order to provide you more focused email communications or other information … information collected through one Microsoft service may be combined with information obtained through other Microsoft services. We may also supplement the information we collect with information obtained from other companies.

Thus, while Microsoft clearly scans the contents of your Hotmail/Outlook.com email to guard against spamming and malware, and it associates your Microsoft account and Outlook.com-associated email addresses with a sizable basket of collected data, Microsoft doesn’t scan your Outlook.com email for advertising-related keywords. That’s certainly laudable, even if the rules are different for Yahoo.

But it also reinforces the problems with using a Microsoft account for activities other than retrieving mail from Outlook.com, sharing settings in Internet Explorer, or using Skype (which is being investigated for collusion with the NSA). Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft has been pushing Windows users to sign on to Windows using a Microsoft account. In Windows 8.1, setting up a new account on a Windows machine is heavily biased toward using or creating a Microsoft account. (To create a local, non-Microsoft, account in Windows 8.1 takes three nonintuitive, poorly identified steps.)

Microsoft’s going to get a big dose of local information from that Microsoft account tie-in, if and/or when Windows 8 ever reaches critical mass. As a Microsoft customer that means, unless you’re very careful, Microsoft will have full records of when you log on to a Windows machine, where the machine’s located, what version of Windows it’s running, and heaven only knows what other details.

Scroogled? Gimme a break. Does Google coerce you into logging on to Android devices with a Gmail account?

When it comes to pots calling privacy-busting kettles black, Google doesn’t even hold a candle to Windows 8.1’s new “feature” dubbed SmartSearch. It’s activated by default when you install Windows 8.1, and it’s undeniably “smart” — for Microsoft’s data gathering and for Bing advertisers.

I talked about the details back in July, when we first saw SmartSearch in the Windows 8.1 Milestone Preview. Nothing’s changed since then. Basically, unless you know how and where to turn it off, Microsoft is going to start gathering all of the search terms you use on your computer, inside Windows, to look for data on your computer or your local network. Those search terms get sent to Bing, where they can be mashed up with your Microsoft account. Note that I’m not talking about Web searches, where you expect the search engine to store what you type. I’m talking about searches on your machine.

Microsoft has made Scroogled hay out of the way Google displays paid ads in search results. Even a cursory glance at search results shows that Bing and Google both play the same game. But this new SmartSearch “feature” makes the old paid-ad argument look like a tempest in a blackened teapot. Now, with Windows 8.1, Microsoft reaches into your machine, stores all of the terms you search for, and dishes up ads based on the results.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I condone Google’s highly questionable data-harvesting techniques. Quite the contrary. But Microsoft’s holier-than-thou attack ad campaign begs a big reality check.

A further counsel bear in mind: If that thy roof be made of glass, It shows small wit to pick up stones To pelt the people as they pass.

— Miguel de Cervantes, “Don Quixote de la Mancha,” 1605    (transl. John Ormsby, 1885)

This story, “Scroogled, my ass,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.