by Google is under attack once again – not from Facebook this time, but from Microsoft. An ad that is making the rounds of the social media world, titled “O365 MGX Copy wmv”, is actually a rather entertaining indictment of Google’s targeted advertising of Gmail users based on contextual ads in Gmail. Here’s the video:
While I get that Google has the right to look at my email and target ads to me based on the content of those emails (heck, they are providing me a free email account and lots of data storage :)), this Microsoft ad, which at the current moment is unlisted in YouTube, is a pretty harsh smear of Gmail. I can’t imagine someone at Microsoft accidentally uploaded this video to YouTube (a Google owned product, no less), left it unlisted, and allowed it to be seen 472,591 times already since July 28. 2011. If they did, and this was never meant to go live, someone’s getting fired!
Either way, let me know what you think about Gmail and targeted advertising. Do the ads bother you? I know I never look at them.
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