Microsoft's Anti-Google Video Campaign

eldavojohn writes "As the presidential race heats up, the smear ads on TV are also increasing. But Microsoft isn't going to site idly by and let the politicians engage in all that song and dance — and Microsoft really does employ both song and dance. Their Youtube channel appears to be slowly transforming from trade show videos and launches into a marketing attack or propaganda campaign that only targets Google (both videos I've watched seemed to have nothing positive about Microsoft in them). Under a month ago, they launched a spoof called GMail man, a creepy guy that flips through all your GMail and serves up super personal ads that are wrong (although they never say if Hotmail engages in targeted marketing). And a few days ago Googlighting shows up to spread fear and uncertainty about Google Docs. Most amusing to this viewer was that I found no such trace of 'Googlighting' on Bing's video service."

Re:FUD

[scdeimos]

What they're saying is your company chooses when the ugprades are done and can give employees a heads up.

And all that's off the table with Office 365 - upgrades happen when Microsoft wants them to.

Re:FUD

[semi-extrinsic]

Fair points. But we should really compare apples and apples here. MS's own Office 365 (which this is an advert for, I think) also auto-updates on a 90 day schedule according to this [wikipedia.org].

What I think is MS's problem with Office 365, however, is that it falls between two chairs. It is not as powerful as real Office, for businesses wanting the power of, say, Excel and Access. It is also not free, so more casual users (say, a barista who owns his own coffee shop) would rather have Google Docs for free. Or, again, she would buy a copy of Office Home&Business.

Seems to me that the "Medium/Large business that solely wants to do Office in the cloud", which is what this is designed for, is pretty much a mythical creature.

Re:Youtube

[symbolset]

Last I checked seeing the ads is the tradeoff for receiving the amusing content - a deal I entered of my own free will. Nobody clicked it for me, and the ads never came near my throat. This is how the Internet works. If you don't like ad supported content you should probably sell your computer, tv and radio - and cancel your mail delivery too.

Re:Youtube

[poetmatt]

Umm, microsoft still filters results about things involving google and microsoft so that they are favorable to microsoft. This has nothing to do with "IP protection status", and considering that such a phrase doesn't exist, please don't make such a claim.

DMCA protection has nothing to do with choosing to filter content in any way.

Re:Stay Classy Microsoft

[drkstr1]

Go to File -> See Revision history.

I've been using Docs like a hipster... before it was cool... and it was love at first sight! I have also set up multiple small businesses on Google Apps, and have heard nothing but good things from them. IMHO, it really is a superior model to passing a file around like a chump.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Stay Classy Microsoft

[Kagetsuki]

I use LibreOffice AND Google Docs for business. Google Docs is great for collaboration and you can import/export to LO easily. For final formatting I use LO though. Google Docs has some weird issues with images still and there are some random tweaky things too (font handling, bullets in lists have tweaky formatting issues) but in the end it's only little things and they're easy to fix before you print them or package them in a pdf.

Re:Youtube

[Karzz1]

I believe what GP is *trying* to allude to is "common carrier" status. However, Google is not a carrier [wikipedia.org] in this respect.