scroogled

[Victor Steinbok]

New word?

http://goo.gl/xsFHs
> Microsoft's "Scroogled" campaign is an effort to draw new customers to
> its own email service, Outlook -- and plans to do so by informing
> Internet users nationwide of Gmail's practices.
>
> Microsoft is telling the nation that Google scans each email that is
> sent and received through the Gmail service for keywords that can help
> it target users with more accurate advertisements. Microsoft even
> commissioned a study, conducted by GfK Roper, where 70 percent of
> users were unaware of Google's email scanning and 88 percent
> disapproved of it once they knew.
>
> “Emails are personal — and people feel that reading through their
> emails to sell ads is out of bounds,” said Stefan Weitz, senior
> director of Online Services at Microsoft. “We honor the privacy of our
> Outlook.com users, and we are concerned that Google violates that
> privacy every time an Outlook.com user exchanges messages with someone
> on Gmail. This campaign is as much about protecting Outlook.com users
> from Gmail as it is about making sure Gmail users know what Google’s
> doing.”
>
> Microsoft will spread the news and its new word "Scroogled" all over
> TV, Internet and print advertisements. It even launched a petition to
> stop going through user emails for the sake of ad sales, where it has
> received nearly 600 signatures of the required 25,000 at the time this
> article was written.
>
> Microsoft was even nice enough to offer a few examples of Google's
> practices.

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