14 DAY TRIAL // In the ongoing Microsoft and Google face-off over their respective Clouds, the two companies have used a diverse arsenal to win over customers, including humorous video jabs.
Case in point: the Gmail Man video embedded at the bottom of this article. Microsoft reportedly shared the funny take on Google’s email service approach to privacy at its recent Microsoft Global Exchange sales conference.
The Redmond company has yet to confirm this detail, or to acknowledge that it’s behind the Gmail Man spoof. (via Mary-Jo Foley)
The Gmail Man video opens up with the following message: “The following scenes represent the opposite experience of Office 365.”
Introductory message aside, the video is actually focused on Gmail’s privacy sins, namely the fact that Google is not really separating its email and advertising businesses. Moreover, Microsoft hints of the fact that advertising will always come first for Google even to the expense of user privacy, after all, its ad revenues keep the lights on for the Mountain View-based search giant.
“He’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time / He peeks at every subject in unreal time / Probing ever sentence and all your punctuation / Got his nose in every colon, every situation,” are the lines for the opening tune in the video.
“Well, sometimes, when a person really loves their Gmail very, very much, the two get together, and an ad is born,” the Gmail Man explains in the video.
Google has confirmed that it scans the content of emails and serves advertising to users in accordance to specific keywords included in their messages.
Microsoft on the other hand doesn’t. Not in Windows Live Hotmail, and not in Exchange Online, the email service packed under Office 365.
The software giant is playing the user privacy hand, but I fear that it’s a weak hand, even when it comes down to business users.
The problem is not the issue of user privacy, which is a key factor that each customer should consider when using a Cloud application or service. Microsoft is more than right to point to user privacy deficiencies.
The real problem is that users don’t seem to care about their privacy. I’ve had the user privacy argument with some of my friends using Gmail. They’re aware that Google is serving ads based on the content of their messages, but they couldn’t care any less.
“My business… your business… it’s all business. The business of advertising, personalized for whatever you’re gmailing,” the Gmail Man adds, answering “Who cares?” to the question “Isn’t that kind of wrong?”
I expect that as time passes, user privacy will become more and more of an issue. Remember how years ago nobody cared about ecology? But I just don’t see user privacy a deal breaking factor for end users of business customers today.
One thing is clear, we have yet to witness the last Microsoft Cloud vs. Google Cloud measuring contest from the warring duo.