Leaked Microsoft Video Parodies Chrome Ad

First time accepted submitter Stratus311 writes "An article from The Verge shows a video leaked from Microsoft that parodies Google's Chrome ad. From the article: 'Microsoft and Google have been locked in a war of words over a YouTube Windows Phone app, but in the midst of the arguments a new Scroogled ad has emerged. Designed to be an internal-only video, a copy has somehow managed to find its way onto the web right in the middle of Google's I/O developer conference.'" "Somehow" leaked.

Re:The difference between all three

[Enderandrew]

With Apple, you pay for services, but are still tracked and sold contextual ads.
With Microsoft, you pay for services, but are still tracked and sold contextual ads.
With Google, you get services for free, but are tracked and sold contextual ads.

Re:Insightful video

[poetmatt]

do you have any idea how much this is a pot calling the kettle black?

The difference between MS and google is very, very explicit.

1: you can take everything out of google. they pretty much enable it. No such thing exists for MS.
2: you choose to opt into google in the first place. MS does not give you such an option, and defaults to you being opted in (windows, IE, bing).

Google is not a completely innocent company, but this entire article is the biggest fucking strawman ever (and the laziest).

Brilliant

[Yebyen]

The ad is simply brilliant. I never thought I'd see Microsoft looking out for my best interests.

It doesn't make me want to use Internet Explorer, but it had me laughing, and got me thinking.

Which is more than I can say for these comments!

Re:Insightful video

[LordLimecat]

Skype is worse than you think. Research the partnership that Skype has with TOM in china. Hint: If you plan on using skype in china, you probably dont want to download their version: It reports every word you say directly to the CCC.

Call me when Google Talk starts shipping with backdoors for one of the more politically repressive governments out there.

Microsoft internal videos

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Microsoft makes lots of these internal videos.

I worked as a temp at Microsoft a few years back, and there was a screen in the building that showed videos on loops. There was a pretty cool ad showing the wonders of an "ultra-mobile PC" being used in tablet mode, for example. (It didn't mention cost or battery life, just the cool stuff you could do.)

Anyway I saw a video, something like ten minutes long, that was a parable about outsourcing IT: This C-level guy (maybe the CEO but I'm not sure) wakes up and starts his day; his car comes by to pick him up, but it isn't his usual driver. "Where's my usual driver?" "He's... not here." The driver introduces himself as "Charles" and the C-level guy immediately starts calling him "Chuck" (which annoyed me right there). They get to the office building and all the people are gone. C-level guy: "Where is everyone?" Charles: "You forgot them." It turns out that the company decided to outsource IT to save money, not thinking about the effect this would have on the workers, so now this is a magical "A Christmas Carol" sort of situation where Charles is taking the C-level guy on a tour to show him what is bad now. A sales guy lost a sale because he didn't have a Windows Mobile smartphone. Other things... the one I remember is that they visited the server room, and it was empty, because the IT was outsourced to the cloud (this was pre-Azure so cloud meant non-Microsoft and therefore bad). A kid, maybe nine years old, rolled slowly past on a skateboard. "Who's that?" asked the C-level guy. "Oh, that's Linux." At the very end, the C-level guy wakes up for real and of course the people aren't missing, and he bumps into Charles who it seems is actually in his IT department. "Oh, can we get those Windows Mobile phones now?" Happy ending! Heart-warming!

I've searched YouTube a few times to see if this was ever leaked, but I don't know what it was called and I've never found it.

Re:Insightful video

[gtbritishskull]

Please elaborate. I don't see how Google tracking me (or anything else they have done) has cost me money or negatively impacted my life in any way. I could go on and on about how Microsoft has cost me money or negatively impacted my life. And I don't think the fact that I don't get shown tampon ads (targeted advertising) harms me. I actually consider it a positive.

Re:Insightful video

[gtbritishskull]

I recently bought a computer with Windows 7. While I was going through the setup dialog, it asked me to agree to allow the computer to send search data to Microsoft (and Bing). But, the decline option had in parenthesis next to it that if I declined then I basically was not going to be able to use Windows. So, I had to agree to be opted in, and then go behind it and opt out (by uninstalling the Bing bar or whatever it was). But, I ended up installing a vanilla Windows 7 installation which didn't have the phone home ridiculousness.

Re:Insightful video

[ozmanjusri]

So does every other company in the world with an advertising department.

Some are better than others.

And according to the EFF, Google is better at protecting your privacy than Microsoft..

https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 [eff.org]

Microsoft are hypocrites as well as liars? Who'd have thought...