In new ad Microsoft accuses Gmail of spamming users

There’s no end in sight to the Microsoft-Google hate story. Microsoft has now launched a new ad as part of its ‘Scroogled’ series, where the software giant has accused Google of spamming email inboxes of users with ads.

According to the video, Google reads each and every one of your mails, and then picks out key words. Using these key words, advertisements are emailed to your inbox as legitimate emails. At the end of the video, Microsoft offers its email service, Outlook.com as an alternative to Gmail - one that doesn’t scan through your personal emails.

Watch the video below:

Microsoft’s Scroogled ads have appeared on television and in print, depicting the Internet search engine giant as a duplicitous company more interested in increasing profits and power than protecting people’s privacy and providing unbiased search results.

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So how valid are these accusations? Technically true Google uses automation to produce ads based on emails since 2004. It’s a well-known fact that ads are customised in accordance to users’ email content.

[caption id=“attachment_1027725” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Microsoft calls what Google’s privacy policies do for users ‘Scroogled’. Image courtesy Scroogled.com[/caption]

Besides this, if the practice still alarms you, you have the option of turning it off entirely. Through Google Ad Preferences, you can block individual advertisers or block all the advertising entirely.

Microsoft, on the other hand, bases its ads on the data you provide when you sign up for the email: for example, your age, your location and gender. They also use data from yourXbox, Windows phone, and Internet browsing sessions. While these two are slightly different, in the final analysis, Google and Microsoft do much the same thing: scan your information for advertisements, allow you to switch it off if you wish to, and don’t divulge the information to third parties.

Earlier, Microsoft vilified Google Inc for sharing some of the personal information that it gathers about people who buy applications designed to run on smartphones and tablet computers powered by Android.

Other ads have ripped Google’s long-running practice of electronically scanning the contents of people’s Gmail accounts to help sell ads. Another ad attacked a recently introduced policy that requires retailers to pay to appear in the shopping section of Google’s dominant search engine.

With inputs from Associated Press