Have You Been Scroogled?

Every now and then Microsoft likes to remind people that "Google goes through every Gmail that's sent or received". They do this in hopes of converting users to Outlook.com. Just over a week ago, Microsoft fired up their smear campaign again, and this time there's a commercial...

I won't comment on the bad acting, or the fact that this guy is one of the extremely few people that own a Microsoft Surface tablet, or that the lady has Superman-like reflexes. Instead, I'll focus on the message it is trying to convey.

Google provides many free services. Search, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Drive, etc. These are all free services to you. Now... Google is a company, and a company's bottom line is to make money. Advertising is the number one way to make money online, and the better the information, the more targeted, and successful, the advertising can be. So is Google really reading your email? In a way, yes. At this point in the game, if you use Gmail, you really should understand that any email you have sent, received, deleted, or marked as spam, is sitting on Google's servers. Google reads your email to be able to display it to you, so yes, Google reads your email. When you send a message, Google takes the text you typed and carries it over to your friend, and then displays it to them. So yes, Google reads your email. And when Google takes the email to your friend, it thinks Gee, Fred is talking about motorcycles. I think he would like this advertisement about a motorcycle dealer in his town. So yes, Google reads your email.

Now, when I say 'Google reads your email' please don't picture a couple nerds sitting in a back room talking about your personal life, because that isn't even close to how it works. Just like their search engine, Google utilizes an algorithm that will scan the text in your email for keywords so it can serve up ads to you that the algorithm calculates will be of the most use to you. Facebook (which Microsoft is a corporate investor of) does the same thing, although not quite as well.

Make sure to pay attention to the wording in the commercial: "Google uses my personal email to sell ads?" Yeah, it's how they make money. Microsoft has the luxury of selling you the operating system you are using, which is how they make money. "These ads just started showing up." Well, no... they were there from the beginning, but now they are becoming more relevant.

The focus of the commercial is on the fact that Google is using the data in the emails to provide ads, and it suggests that an email provider, such as Outlook, won't read your email and in turn... won't serve ads. Well, the email reading part may be true, but since you bought the Windows OS, they can afford not to. As far as ads in your brand new Outlook.com account.... they're still there! Here is a screenshot from a video on Outlook.com:

Can you see what's on the right side? Clicking the picture will make it larger. Can you see it? What is that? Oh... they're ads. But if Microsoft isn't reading your email, there is a high probability that none of the ads will be relevant to you in any way. So really, what this boils down to is would you like ads catered to you, or more of a grab bag type of offering? Because you're getting ads either way.

The big question I have is, do you care? With all the information that is voluntarily put on Facebook, Twitter and Google+... do you really care about personalized ads in your email? Just over a year ago, I wrote a post called In This Day & Age, Privacy Is A Myth, and I think it still holds true. More and more people are broadcasting their lives on a free public forum and then turn around and complain about a lack of privacy. If you are using a free service, then someone, somewhere is making money off of you. In this case, you really can't have your cake and eat it too.

If you want to hear Microsoft's pitch to get you to switch, head over to Scroogled.com.

Oh, and Microsoft.... Scroogled? Really? Couldn't find a more idiotic sounding word? *facepalm*