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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 busi

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.

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.