So, Microsoft is now taking the moral high ground against Google in the war on privacy. In a new campaign, Microsoft is warning internet users not to get ‘Scroogled’ by allowing Gmail to scan their inboxes to sell ads targeted based on the conversation the user is involved in.
A noble stance one would think, but this is coming from Microsoft, the company that aggressively exploited a near monopoly in desktop software to become one of the largest and most powerful organizations in the world. Once again: we users are merely a ping pong ball in this game of data land grabs.
Microsoft was caught napping when the Internet irreversibly changed how people interact with computers, and has been playing catch up ever since. It has even tried to play Google at its own game, and failed, with the acquisition of aQuantive, a move that has cost it $6.2Bn. Indeed, Microsoft still boasts how it can target ads to consumers based on behaviour and profile of users – it just stops short of analyzing email content.
But perhaps the most telling sign that this new found piety is a red herring is Microsoft’s continued partnership with Facebook, which has recently born fruit in the shape of Facebook’s Graph Search. Microsoft seems more than happy to help Facebook, perhaps the most exploitative of all the data miners, tap into user data in a way never seen before to deliver a search product of dubious merit.
The ‘Scroogled’ campaign is opportunism at large and the only thing we can take from this is that not only do the big Internet companies want to monetize your data; they want to score points off each other with it too.