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> Surely nobody at Lenovo honestly belived that ad injection improved user experience? I can see the marketing folks honestly believing this. See, the problem

by xienze 12y ago

> Surely nobody at Lenovo honestly belived that ad injection improved user experience? I can see the marketing folks honestly believing this. See, the problem with people in marketing is that they come up with ideas that sound good in theory but neglect to consider the implications. "Wouldn't it be great if I was presented with offers to buy things based on context clues in the web pages I'm browsing?" "Wouldn't it be great if I didn't have to enter passwords all the time?" After the marketing brainstorm session the engineers are asked "can this be done?" And the answer is usually "Yes, but..." This is the point at which the marketing droid zones out. "Make it so!" So yes, I do believe someone in marketing thought this was a great idea. And if it worked perfectly without compromising security, it probably would be a good idea. But there's always compromises in technology, and the marketers either can't grasp or don't care about the consequences.

pixl97 12y ago
Marketing folk are both the biggest scammers and biggest suckers at the same time. Causality is not one of their strong points.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
I don't know. My experience with the output of marketing and sales people is that they come up with ideas that sound good only to them, and not to anyone with even a miligram of conscience. I try to attribute it to a kind of job-related blindness rather than malice, but seriously - quite often those ideas boil down to "how can we scam those poor schmucks"? It's like no one ever asks themselves the question if the idea is actually good for the end user. Good business is about providing value for proper compensation. If you're trying to trick your customer into paying more money for less value, you're just scamming them.
- xienze 12y ago
  Well, at least in my experience they do come up with some ideas that are genuinely about making the user experience better (to increase retention/sales/etc. of course). Like the idea about doing away with or simplifying passwords somehow. It's an idea with good intentions and if it could work perfectly it would be _awesome_. But it doesn't work perfectly -- there are major drawbacks. The sales and marketing folks just don't understand that part of the equation.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I don't mind that kind of mistakes that much. Well, they don't understand the security implications, maybe they didn't listen to someone when they should have. Yes, sometimes it's a fuckup, but intentions were at least honest. As strongly as I hate scumbag marketers and sales, I strongly (and publicly) applaud those who have good intentions and are aiming for a win-win. But here, in this particular case, you clearly have bad intentions with a side order of criminal negligence.
calbear81 12y ago
Let's make broad claims about how people in tech marketing must be idiots! See the funny thing is that I've worked in the PC making business and the parts business (Newegg) and the way this software makes it into the preload is not because of marketing, it's a product or finance decision. Hardware is a low margin business so you get paid to add in some pre-installed software and structure some revenue sharing deals. Lenovo isn't lying when it said that it wasn't financially meaningful; in fact, that's probably why they stopped installing it (not because they did some survey of users, etc.). I don't think any reasonably competent marketer would ever suggest installing some adware as a "feature" so that they could market it. The fact that people are only finding out about this Superfish now meant that Lenovo and Lenovo marketing didn't advertise it's existence. Can someone show me some marketing material that say's "Lenovo PCs, now with more Superfish to enhance your online shopping experience."?
- xienze 12y ago
  > Let's make broad claims about how people in tech marketing must be idiots! That's not really where I was going with it, just pointing out that sales and marketing start out with reasonable "what if I could..." scenarios and don't really care about the implementation. > I don't think any reasonably competent marketer would ever suggest installing some adware as a "feature" so that they could market it. You're right, because they don't think at the implementation level. What I think _did_ happen, if my experience is any indication, is that someone said "I think showing users suggested products would be a tremendous value add! Let the eggheads figure out how to do it." What you end up with is what needs to be done at a technical level in order to fulfill marketing's requirements. It ain't always pretty.
scholia 12y ago
"Wouldn't it be great if I was presented with offers to buy things based on context clues in the web pages I'm browsing?" Sounds a lot like Google ;-)

by xienze 12y ago

pixl97 12y ago

Marketing folk are both the biggest scammers and biggest suckers at the same time. Causality is not one of their strong points.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

I don't know. My experience with the output of marketing and sales people is that they come up with ideas that sound good only to them, and not to anyone with even a miligram of conscience. I try to attribute it to a kind of job-related blindness rather than malice, but seriously - quite often those ideas boil down to "how can we scam those poor schmucks"? It's like no one ever asks themselves the question if the idea is actually good for the end user. Good business is about providing value for proper compensation. If you're trying to trick your customer into paying more money for less value, you're just scamming them.

xienze 12y ago
Well, at least in my experience they do come up with some ideas that are genuinely about making the user experience better (to increase retention/sales/etc. of course). Like the idea about doing away with or simplifying passwords somehow. It's an idea with good intentions and if it could work perfectly it would be _awesome_. But it doesn't work perfectly -- there are major drawbacks. The sales and marketing folks just don't understand that part of the equation.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I don't mind that kind of mistakes that much. Well, they don't understand the security implications, maybe they didn't listen to someone when they should have. Yes, sometimes it's a fuckup, but intentions were at least honest. As strongly as I hate scumbag marketers and sales, I strongly (and publicly) applaud those who have good intentions and are aiming for a win-win. But here, in this particular case, you clearly have bad intentions with a side order of criminal negligence.

calbear81 12y ago

Let's make broad claims about how people in tech marketing must be idiots! See the funny thing is that I've worked in the PC making business and the parts business (Newegg) and the way this software makes it into the preload is not because of marketing, it's a product or finance decision. Hardware is a low margin business so you get paid to add in some pre-installed software and structure some revenue sharing deals. Lenovo isn't lying when it said that it wasn't financially meaningful; in fact, that's probably why they stopped installing it (not because they did some survey of users, etc.). I don't think any reasonably competent marketer would ever suggest installing some adware as a "feature" so that they could market it. The fact that people are only finding out about this Superfish now meant that Lenovo and Lenovo marketing didn't advertise it's existence. Can someone show me some marketing material that say's "Lenovo PCs, now with more Superfish to enhance your online shopping experience."?

xienze 12y ago
> Let's make broad claims about how people in tech marketing must be idiots! That's not really where I was going with it, just pointing out that sales and marketing start out with reasonable "what if I could..." scenarios and don't really care about the implementation. > I don't think any reasonably competent marketer would ever suggest installing some adware as a "feature" so that they could market it. You're right, because they don't think at the implementation level. What I think _did_ happen, if my experience is any indication, is that someone said "I think showing users suggested products would be a tremendous value add! Let the eggheads figure out how to do it." What you end up with is what needs to be done at a technical level in order to fulfill marketing's requirements. It ain't always pretty.

scholia 12y ago

"Wouldn't it be great if I was presented with offers to buy things based on context clues in the web pages I'm browsing?" Sounds a lot like Google ;-)