8 ms·
Microsoft makes fun of Google with Gmail Man video, again
- bishnu 15y agoWhile these kinds of ads/videos are fun and generate pageviews, they also scream to their audience "we're #2!" (at best). Other examples include the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads, and the Galaxy S II ad making fun of hipster iPhone owners [1]. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5rDCbgXgBg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5rDCbgXgBg Edited to correct Samsung phone model.
- yellowbkpk 15y agoYour [1] is an ad for the Samsung Galaxy S II, not the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. At least your Mac/PC and Galaxy S2 ads had some copy telling the viewer why they might want to use the product in question (Use a Mac because it's simpler, Use the Galaxy S2 because it has most of the features the iPhone 4S has (and you don't have to wait in line)). This Microsoft ad is just plain GMail bashing. Edit: Yikes, why the downvotes?
- recoiledsnake 15y ago>This Microsoft ad is just plain GMail bashing Unlike the others, this isn't really an ad that is part of a big campaign, so it's not comparable. It is right now just an uploaded video to YouTube, and doesn't show up in popular TV like the other two ads.
- dhughes 15y agoHotmail is a complete and utter mess; short passwords, constant account breaches, spam, spam, spam - I wouldn't throw stones.
- pagekalisedown 15y agoAccording to Microsoft, you have your priorities wrong, and you should be more concerned about targeted ads. :) Edit: No sense of humor?
- S_A_P 15y agoIn fairness, isnt office 365 different than hotmail?
- rbanffy 15y agoIsn't 365 the paid (unlike Hotmail) alternative to Google Apps for Business?
- onemoreact 15y agoYou can use long passwords with Hotmail. Also, I get a lot more Gmail spam than on my old hotmail act, but that could be because I use my name with Gmail so bot's can just guess it. PS: Both companies integrate your email act with other services. So I have been doing a side to side comparisons for a while and while I like Gmail's interface a Significantly more, Hotmail seems to have a better backend.
- dhughes 15y agoI'll have to go check again I only recently got it working and I'm quite sure the password I chose was restricted to something like 10 to 15 characters. Nearly all my passwords for other site are a minimum of 25 (completely random) characters if not longer. It took me a good solid week of e-mailing support, MS forums, Googling to get it unlocked. People constantly spam it or think it's their account (I've had it since '97) so they constantly try to log into it which apparently locks me the legitimate user out of the account, great feature!
- onemoreact 15y agoTyping random passwords that long is simply a waste of time. 70^15 ~= 10^27 passwords assuming a 10 billion computers each checked a 100 billion passwords a second after 10,000,000,000 years there would be a 0.1% chance they cracked your account.
- mhd 15y agoA "burning sensation" joke? Seriously, there's ample opportunity for comedy here and they went with this? Did Microsoft hire Adam Sandler's writers?
- powertower 15y agoThey didn't fail. The comedy in this video is supposed to be corny.
- sopooneo 15y agoIt's a very fine line. You can do overtly corny and still be funny. It just takes clever writing.
- powertower 15y agoI don't understand what the complaining is about about. Was this video supposed to be something else, presented in another way, with a different dialog? Was it supposed to make you laugh? Is that who it was made for?
- mhd 15y agoI'm definitely more in that target demographic than one for an Adam Sandler movie. It has a certain blandness about it, a comedy "uncanny valley". The general direction would've worked for me, but it lacks any kind of style. This looks like a corporate training video version of fun, something approved by the type of manager who likes to "liven up" his presentations by the occasional quip. This is like a joke told via Powerpoint. It actually wouldn't need all that much to make it work. Make gmail-man a bit more creepy. Or aim for a certain style of musical (or era). And again, 'burning sensation' has to go. (Can't believe I'm actually writing that much about what basically amounts to "meh".)
- powertower 15y ago> Make gmail-man a bit more creepy. Or aim for a certain style of musical (or era). So you want to 1) ruin it and then also 2) make it so everyone thinks Microsoft is bitter.
- masnick 15y agoYeah, because random Flash ads are way better than text ads that possibly add value for the user. https://skitch.com/masnick/g6fn9/hotmail https://skitch.com/masnick/g6fn9/hotmail I understand that Google needs to make money to provide a great service like Gmail for free, and I appreciate that they aren't shoving animated shit down my throat. If they have to algorithmically read my email to do that, so be it.
- Maro 15y agoThis ad is for Office 365, whatever that is.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Maro 15y agoI created an account, the whole thing looks pretty good and works from Firefox. Unfortunately I can't send inbound mail 10 minutes after creation of the account, it bounces, but I can send outbound mail. EDIT: works. This could be a real competitor to Gmail/apps for SMBs.
- antoko 15y agoOffice 365 is a cloud-based office setup from MS - which includes email and office docs its aimed at corporations. It is a newer version of what was BPOS. Google have been trying to expand into that corporate world. MS are fighting back since it represents their bread and butter.
- emehrkay 15y agoAm I supposed to believe that none of MS' online mail properties do the same things?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jrockway 15y agoThey couldn't figure out how to algorithmically serve ads, so they just hire a real person to read your email and find the right ads.
- emehrkay 15y agoThey bought Powerset who had some great natural language tech (I had a chance to talk to one of their engineers before MS bought them). I believe Bing incorporates Powerset in their search
- rauljara 15y agoProblems with hotmail/ms aside, I'm really glad a major corporation is going after google over the privacy issues. It's pretty hard to get people to care about privacy, and one of the few ways I could imagine the issue entering into the mainstream conscious is through a major advertising budget. Even if there's some hypocrisy involved, it's a win just to get people talking about it. Here's hoping MS makes a campaign out of it. And that others follow suit.
- rbanffy 15y ago> privacy issues. Is it privacy violation when a machine matches keywords to ads? Unless the machine has some kind of consciousness, I can't see a privacy issue unless some human gets access to that information. Does this mean Microsoft free Gmail competitor, Hotmail, does not relate ads with viewer profile and screen content?
- powertower 15y agoI don't know how Google stores and uses the data gathered by keyword parsing and subjecting/contextualizing my emails. Or what info the advertiser/destination gets or can infer. It could be a potential privacy violation if the data is hacked, leaked, used to gather intel on my business, analyzed, backed up for eternity, accessed by 3rd party, etc. > Does this mean Microsoft free Gmail competitor, Hotmail, does not relate ads with viewer profile and screen content? Hotmail does not analyze your emails for keywords. They display ads on other, less intrusive, factors.
- icebraining 15y agoYou don't know how Hotmail stores your emails either, do you?
- powertower 15y agoThe point is that I know Google parses the contents of my emails for keywords and then transfers that data around its ad systems (at the least). And hence presents an extra way for things to go horribly wrong. I also know Hotmail (by it's own admission) does not do this. Aside from running emails through a spamfilter, I'd rather not have my email provider gather intel on me via the contents of my emails.
- joejohnson 15y agoI have to agree with a lot of what microsoft if pointing out. However, gmail is still superior in features to any of microsoft's email offerings, so I won't be changing providers. Can anyone name a competitor to gmail that has all of gmail's features?
- rbanffy 15y agoWere Microsoft comparing Gmail to Hotmail, it could be a fair comparison. But then Microsoft wouldn't be able to criticize Google without admitting their own banners are completely unrelated to context (and, thus, offer much worse relevance and click-through ratios). Or they aren't and, again, Microsoft wouldn't be able to complain.
- jrockway 15y agoIf it's a violation of privacy to serve ads based on email content, why is it not a violation of privacy to filter out spam? It's exactly the same thing: a computer program "reads" your email, and then it does something with the information it learned.
- jakubw 15y agoIt's not exactly the same thing. To serve targeted ads, you need to associate the information you inferred from e-mails with individual users (and with so much data that goes through your Gmail account, that means building a very accurate profile of the user: their interests, buying habits etc.). To filter out spam, you don't need all that. In fact, you can build a pretty decent spam filter that is entirely contextless i.e. classifies e-mails without knowing who's the recipient.
- yanw 15y agoAnthropomorphizing webmail are we? Equating machine parsing to a human "reading" email is just straight out deception and preying on the uninformed. Hotmail and every other webmail service parses emails either to check for spelling errors or combat spam, Gmail uses adsense as well which is a much less annoying ad system than Hotmail's display ads. Oh and Google Apps, the primary target to this Microsoft propaganda is ad free.
- pud 15y agoThis ad is meant to mislead laypeople into thinking that Google employs humans to read your email.