News - Microsoft’s Scroogleized version of the Google Chrome video ad

[Scribe]

You can turn off tracking in Chrome... you just lose all the cool history and advanced search features it makes possible. Ads? Where? Even if I had noticed some, Chrome store has Ad Blockers. If I did have ads, I'd rather they were targeted rather than being told that I need a more comfortable tampon. Then there's the unbranded Chromium on-top of it all as an option.

[Saracen]

You can turn off tracking in Chrome... you just lose all the cool history and advanced search features it makes possible. Ads? Where? Even if I had noticed some, Chrome store has Ad Blockers. If I did have ads, I'd rather they were targeted rather than being told that I need a more comfortable tampon. Then there's the unbranded Chromium on-top of it all as an option.

If that was, in part at least, responding to the points I made, then my reply would be that, first, I don't trust Google. Just because I disable something doesn't mean it's turned off.

As for Ads, if you want targeted ads, that's fine, because that's your choice. I don't. But it's not the receipt of targeted ads that is my real issue, but that Google store data on people allowing the ads to be targeted in the first place.

I mean, I'd prefer no ads, but in the real world, if I'm going to get ads I don't, under absolutely any circumstances whatever, want them targeted, because I don't want companies like Google profiling me. Not now, not ever, not to the tiniest extent, and not for any purpose.

So .... in any product or service, like a browser, I simply do not trust Google not to be acquiring and storing data, even if they aren't currently or directly targeting adverts. It's not the adverts I (mainly) object to, or even the targeting - it's the acquiring, storing and data-mining of information that allows them to target.

Again, in the real world, I cannot (unfortunately) stop Google or some other companies vacuuming up every bit of data they can get, but I can refuse to present it to them on a plate. But use a Google application, be it a browser, or a cloud app, or a data storage service? Not a chance. I do use an Android tablet, but NEVER do anything personal or it, and any Google searches I do go via a secure 'proxy' (for lack of a better description) service, so Google can't even track that.

So while some (online and real world) data accumulation is inevitable, I do everything I reasonably and pragmatically can to minimise it, and I have been known to indulge in a little creative obfuscation from time to time, specifically to corrupt the integrity of any data they do hold on me. If their vacuuming is following me around sucking up all the breadcrumbs I leave, some of those breadcrumbs are deliberately actually rat droppings, and a few are poison pellets.

[intel5271]

im with MS on this. i just do not trust google with anything of mine unless its a common service like youtube, which was better before google started tampering with it. and i use a chromium (i think) based browser called Maxthon and i like it its fast, sleek has the features i want, while still being minimalistic in th UI. i switched to it because firefox starts to get bogged down after awhile and i needed to keep reinstalling it, i hate IE, i dont trust google, and all the other browsers i tried just suck. i also just like windows in general and i love win 8, its SOOO much faster than win 7 and vista was a failure. i like bing too, it works well and it looks nice

EDIT: and google tracks EVERYTHING you do with thier software like A LOT and thats just not healthy :/

[stanonwheels]

Actually quite like these ads, big companies take themselves a bit too seriously sometimes and it's nice to see them messing each other about a bit. Doesn't make much difference to me (I use Nightly because I'm too cool for stability), but still interesting to watch how a lot more effort seems to be going into public opinion than patent lawsuits lately.

[TheAnimus]

It's quite interesting to see how people re-act to Microsoft.

Personally I think they made a huge mistake, when they cut development on Silverlight. HTML5 is piss poor by comparison, and I dare anyone who's actually used both to disagree.

On camp google, their terms and conditions have ruled them out for this project, no chrome, trying to explain this to my html guy didn't go down well. You can still use chroniam didn't help matters either.

MS have a rather good balance by default, it's funny, I don't mind trusting their terms of service, it's funny because where google has gone in exploiting people, Ubuntu has followed.

I just did a clean install of firefox, no prompting, it hasn't set up "do not track". I have to know how to get in to the options menu (good luck newbs!) and then I can set do not track finally.

MS show you a wizard for this, and default to do not track. I think they can take the high ground with this one.

[Andrew McP]

I think they can take the high ground with this one.

Well, they could if they just quietly got on with providing a better alternative. But the whole 'scroogle' campaign smells of desperation to me. And I say that as someone who is equally skeptical of all the big names in software these days.

[TheAnimus]

Well, they could if they just quietly got on with providing a better alternative. But the whole 'scroogle' campaign smells of desperation to me. And I say that as someone who is equally skeptical of all the big names in software these days.

Yes and no, its hard to sell a concept such as privacy, because many people don't think about it.

For instance one of the iPhone adds that ran in the UK always made me laugh, because it showed a "tip calculator", basically a calculator for people too utterly dumb to be able to use the divide button. This was a feature of this shiny phone that my nokia in 1998 could do.

That is an example of selling a feature which address a problem people have, ie, not being able to split the bill, it also nicely sells lifestyle. I thought it was very masterfully executed and sadly reminded me just how dumb most of the population are.

This is trying to address a problem that 'you' didn't know existed. How do you do that? Fear is the general one. How do you sell something that is a neutral, rather than a negative? You have to emphasise its relative difference. That means spell out the negative.

Given that most people can't comprehend the idea of privacy in an abstract manner, reminding people that google attempt to monetise every moment of your online life, is a very valid way of doing that, I don't think it would be easily possible outside of that context.

Even thou they've spelt out that these services exist purely to milk you, just look at the youtube comments (a bastion of low intelligence) most people don't consider it a problem. This is what I find so odd. I don't think G-Mail is any better than half of the other webmail options out there, it goes down a lot unannounced, frequently flakey on syncing to phones etc. Yet so many people still use it.

I also think its completely pants on head retarded dumb, not to own your domain name. What exactly is the agreement you have with google for that email address? How long is the grant for?

[outlander18]

The whole thing with taking money out of your pocket is misleading - Google instead take money out of big companies' pockets, so that they can sell their products to you. And by watching what you do (and keeping that information very private) Google target ads at you that you want to see, not ones that you don't. This makes advertising cheaper for big companies, and lets you look at relevant information not irrelevant junk. After all, as a massive Linux fan and an anti-apple "preacher" so to speak, I've seen adverts for Chromebooks and laptops running Ubuntu, but never an iPad advert. So do you really want to stop Google seeing your information? After all, they are the nice people of the internet.

[crossy]

The whole thing with taking money out of your pocket is misleading - Google instead take money out of big companies' pockets, so that they can sell their products to you. And by watching what you do (and keeping that information very private) Google target ads at you that you want to see, not ones that you don't. This makes advertising cheaper for big companies, and lets you look at relevant information not irrelevant junk. After all, as a massive Linux fan and an anti-apple "preacher" so to speak, I've seen adverts for Chromebooks and laptops running Ubuntu, but never an iPad advert. So do you really want to stop Google seeing your information? After all, they are the nice people of the internet.

Hmm, not sure I'd categorize Google as "nice" ... more a case of (slightly?) less evil than others.

Then again, the bleating of some that "google sells on my information if/when I use their free stuff" gets me annoyed. Nothing's "free" - it all has to be paid for somehow - either directly or otherwise. I use the Google stuff (Android, search, YT, etc) knowing that I'm exposing what I'm up to for their commercial use. Then again - as you point out - the targeting cuts both ways. E.g. YouTube is showing me vid's about Galaxy S4 and guitars/amps etc rather than Justin Bieber videos.