Microsoft to offer anti-Google merchandise from this week
22 Nov 2013
Microsoft it taking its rivalry with Google to a different level with anti-Google merchandise to be introduced this week.
The move comes as part of it year-long anti-Google Scroogled campaign that seeks to highlight what the company saw as the internet search company's sharp practices and underhand use of user data.
The software giant is now offering a selection of reasonably priced items on its online store ranging from Scroogled word-cloud T-shirts for $11.99, emblazoned with Scroogled synonyms like "sold out", "fleeced", "scammed", "conned", "cheated", "fooled, "double-crossed", "defrauded", "hoodwinked", "swindled", and "duped".
Additionally, there are the mugs with the line- ''Keep calm while we steal your data'' for $7.99 though currently sold out. Also ''Step into our Web'' shirts suggest that users of Gmail, Google Search, and Google+ were like ''flies trapped in Google's web.''
Microsoft's Scroogled campaign was originally aimed at promoting Bing by bashing Google's practice of ''selling their shopping search results to a high bidder.''
However, Microsoft's methods have not been uncontroversial, with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) earlier this year ordering a number of search engines, including Google and Bing, to bring greater clarity to search results vis-a-vis ads (including paid search results) displayed on their webpages.
In a new page on its Scroogled.com website, Microsoft explained how Google was spamming users by inserting ads in their inboxes instead of protecting them from spam. Microsoft had added a video and slideshow detailing how Google served spam that looked like regular emails based on the user's other emails. Microsoft had alleged that users' privacy was being violated as the search giant read every single word of every single email sent to and from their Gmail accounts.
Microsoft launched the Scroogled campaign in April through which it attacked Google with a series of ad campaigns. The advertisements that have appeared online, on television and in print, project Google as a duplicitous company more interested in increasing profits and power than protecting people's privacy and providing unbiased search results.
