As you all might have heard about it, this holiday season, Tech Giant Microsoft is really going out of its way to screw Google, with its Scroogled Campaign. (see what i did there ?) Well, Microsoft sure is planning to pull every customer they can over from the Google side to theirs. Are they successful ? well, we’ll talk about that later on. Here is what they have to say, titled “The Choice is Clear, Don’t Get Scroogled this Year.” :
“We launched the “Scroogled” campaign to educate average people about what Google has done with their shopping site. Instead of showing you the most relevant shopping search results for the video game you’re looking to buy your kid, Google Shopping now decides what to show you based partially on how much the merchant selling the product has paid them. Merchants can literally pay to improve their chances to display their products higher than others inside of Google’s shopping ‘search,’ even if it’s not less expensive for you.”
for starters, let’s analyse what it is saying and what it seems like it’s saying. In layman terms, Microsoft is wanting to say that ‘Google shopping’ is evil, and, it displays only paid advertisements. That’s at least what they want to say. But what they end up saying/meaning is, (or at least so it seems) that Google itself is EVIL, Google Search in particular.
Now, Of-course they know it isn’t, they are’t saying it directly either, It can just be seen. The Aggressive Term ‘Scroogled’, saying it out loud that Google is screwing you, might just be the reason. The question however is, not if it’s working or not, but weather it was a wise step to take ?
To answer that question, lets look at Google’s reputation and loyalty. And to add to it, lets bring in Android. Android OS is the most widely used OS, the Most loved and the most defended one. That is to say that whenever, wherever, who ever speaks foul of android in the Internet, he is attacked, opposed, and called things that we rather not talk about. The point being, Android has MANY hard earned fans. What’s more, is that these fans not only include normal people, but also very much include the whole developers community, the geeks and the nerds, people who actually matter to the Tech Industry. Android earned their support, So they need no advertisements for android, because these lovers advertise android all the time without even being paid! Such is the greatness of android, and as a result, of Google itself. People all around the world love Google, simply because of android. Considering that Google was a huge success, both market share and reputation wise, before Android even came out, android has just taken from sky high to universe high, somewhere up there sitting on Gods own chair.
Considering all this, One bad step from Microsoft against Google can put Microsoft in the Bad books of the Google-loyalists, and most importantly, the Developers. The Only worse the Microsoft hatred can get is if Microsoft Wages a War against Linux. Honestly, The whole Scroogled thing just got too over the top in offending a Whole community of Google lovers.
(What do you think of the Scroogled campaign ?)
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