5 ms·

It's unfortunate that the marketing folks at Microsoft are looking to take this stance to unbelievable levels. I would rather see relevant ads than irrelevant

It's unfortunate that the marketing folks at Microsoft are looking to take this stance to unbelievable levels. I would rather see relevant ads than irrelevant ads. I used to work at Microsoft. I heard second hand that some exec (I believe they said it was Ballmer) in the last couple of years made the decision that Microsoft would make privacy a competitive differentiator. This sounds great on the surface, but it has lead to seriously unfortunate behavior. For example, I worked on one of the first server manageability products that was completely hosted on the web. I was really excited to apply what I was learning from HN and the Lean Startup movement to a real online product and not boxed software. Then reality sunk in when we wanted to implement some very common features like A/B testing, surveys, email open rate tracking, exposure control, et al. Our legal and privacy teams were highly reluctant to allow us to do these because it could violate Microsoft's stance on privacy. Some of the most memorable arguments were: * "A/B testing and exposure control are not acceptable for our paying customers. Every customer must see the exact same version of the software at the same time." [Would you rather have a bad feature affect 100% of customers or 1% of customers?] * "Google is getting a lot of bad press for all of the data Chrome sends to Google so we should minimize the amount of data captured and stored from this product." [I heard this in an official privacy training the same day that Chrome overtook IE in market share. Also, my product was specifically meant to capture lots of data about servers and analyze it for potential problems.] * "We understand that these practices may be common place at [name any internet company here, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Bingo Card Creator], but we are not them. You must find a precedent that is set inside Microsoft before we can proceed." I hope that Microsoft does succeed in making privacy a competitive differentiator, but I feel they lack tact and common sense in many cases.

speeder 14y ago
Even since when Microsoft was good at common sense? Microsoft is good in getting sales, not common sense. As you said, privacy to them is a strategy, not something that is really important or part of the company culture.
OGinparadise 14y ago
I hope that Microsoft does succeed in making privacy a competitive differentiator, but I feel they lack tact and common sense in many cases.. There is no love lost between them, and IMO Microsoft will get some traction because Google is desperate to increase revenue and keep their PE at over 20. Their shopping is 100% ads and probably 90% of most transactional query pages are ads. Search for a commercial item and you are greeted by so many that "unbiased" search is drowned out. Google has ruined their product in search of short term profit thanks to Larry Page.
- ithkuil 14y ago
  A sincere curiosity: why do you think it would be in google's interest to bias search result ? What kind of bias you expect exactly ? Showing paying customers first in search results? Or not showing results if there are similar ads to be displayed?
  - OGinparadise 14y ago
    why do you think it would be in google's interest to bias search result ? Ask a Googler or Larry Page, why did they do that? Showing paying customers first in search results? Or not showing results if there are similar ads to be displayed? It's a lot more than showing a few ads next to search, it's almost all ads. Frankly even the "unbiased results" are mostly from advertisers. I do not trust them at all, their revenue keeps increasing with each change
    - ithkuil 14y ago
      > Frankly even the "unbiased results" are mostly from advertisers What do you mean? I wonder if we are talking about the same search engine. For which queries? Can you please provide some data and examples and be constructive. Of course if you search for "buy an ipad" I expected you to get web pages of people selling that thing, some of them will be ads, interesting... Just to compare I searched for "insects in pleistocene", and guess what, no ads, zero, no sites from "advertisers" too. Ah, well there is an entry from google books, in 5th position, crap, I certainly didn't want to know that somebody wrote a book about that... Btw, getting search results containing sites of people selling stuff (I guess that's what you mean by "advertisers in the unbiased results) is a proof that the search is unbiased. Any kind of open and free search engine will give business the possibility to write sites that contain keywords that will eventually get to the search results and piss you off because "the internet is filled with crappy advertisement". What are you criticizing ? The current search engine monopolist or "the capitalistic system" ? -- This article is about a borderline situation where the process of automatic scanning of your personal conversations is used to achieve a goal where you are the party that benefits the less. Compare this with antspam scanning, which also has to analyze text of all your email, including all the training that you put in the system by actually reporting spam, or removing it from the spam folder. You are grateful that somebody is filtering your spam. Of course the company offering the service also benefits from you, since it receives more conversions if it has an useful service which people love. But all in all, you have the feeling that it's you who benefit the most out of the deal, so have a machine parsing your email for that purpose doesn't bother you.
geofft 14y ago
It's unfortunate that privacy isn't what the market cares about. I didn't know MS has this sort of policy, but it makes me tons happier with using their services.

speeder 14y ago

Even since when Microsoft was good at common sense? Microsoft is good in getting sales, not common sense. As you said, privacy to them is a strategy, not something that is really important or part of the company culture.

OGinparadise 14y ago

I hope that Microsoft does succeed in making privacy a competitive differentiator, but I feel they lack tact and common sense in many cases.. There is no love lost between them, and IMO Microsoft will get some traction because Google is desperate to increase revenue and keep their PE at over 20. Their shopping is 100% ads and probably 90% of most transactional query pages are ads. Search for a commercial item and you are greeted by so many that "unbiased" search is drowned out. Google has ruined their product in search of short term profit thanks to Larry Page.

ithkuil 14y ago
A sincere curiosity: why do you think it would be in google's interest to bias search result ? What kind of bias you expect exactly ? Showing paying customers first in search results? Or not showing results if there are similar ads to be displayed?
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  why do you think it would be in google's interest to bias search result ? Ask a Googler or Larry Page, why did they do that? Showing paying customers first in search results? Or not showing results if there are similar ads to be displayed? It's a lot more than showing a few ads next to search, it's almost all ads. Frankly even the "unbiased results" are mostly from advertisers. I do not trust them at all, their revenue keeps increasing with each change
  - ithkuil 14y ago
    > Frankly even the "unbiased results" are mostly from advertisers What do you mean? I wonder if we are talking about the same search engine. For which queries? Can you please provide some data and examples and be constructive. Of course if you search for "buy an ipad" I expected you to get web pages of people selling that thing, some of them will be ads, interesting... Just to compare I searched for "insects in pleistocene", and guess what, no ads, zero, no sites from "advertisers" too. Ah, well there is an entry from google books, in 5th position, crap, I certainly didn't want to know that somebody wrote a book about that... Btw, getting search results containing sites of people selling stuff (I guess that's what you mean by "advertisers in the unbiased results) is a proof that the search is unbiased. Any kind of open and free search engine will give business the possibility to write sites that contain keywords that will eventually get to the search results and piss you off because "the internet is filled with crappy advertisement". What are you criticizing ? The current search engine monopolist or "the capitalistic system" ? -- This article is about a borderline situation where the process of automatic scanning of your personal conversations is used to achieve a goal where you are the party that benefits the less. Compare this with antspam scanning, which also has to analyze text of all your email, including all the training that you put in the system by actually reporting spam, or removing it from the spam folder. You are grateful that somebody is filtering your spam. Of course the company offering the service also benefits from you, since it receives more conversions if it has an useful service which people love. But all in all, you have the feeling that it's you who benefit the most out of the deal, so have a machine parsing your email for that purpose doesn't bother you.

geofft 14y ago

It's unfortunate that privacy isn't what the market cares about. I didn't know MS has this sort of policy, but it makes me tons happier with using their services.