Microsoft Continues 'Scroogled' Campaign; Lobbying to Keep Google Apps Out of Schools

dgstorm

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Do you guys remember the silly "Scroogled" advertising campaign that Microsoft so foolishly embarked upon last year? One part of it ended up back-firing on them big time when their anti-Google blog thread got co-opted by Android fans talking about their negative experiences with Microsoft products (you can find our previous coveragehere). Apparently, Microsoft follows the old saying, "If at first you don't succeed... try, try again." This time, however, they aren't going after Google with a negative advertising campaign. Instead, they are lobbying Congress in an attempt to get legislation passed that will indirectly keep free Google apps out of schools.

If you are scratching your head at that, just keep in mind that the bulk of Microsoft's business comes from Microsoft Office products. If Google's free office apps end up taking over in our various schools, that would put a big dent in Microsoft's profits. What's really eye-opening is the sneaky way that Microsoft is going about trying to make this happen. Here's a quote with the details,

Microsoft is pushing a bill in the Massachusetts state legislature that ”would prohibit companies that provide schools with ‘a cloud-computing’ service… from using the information gleaned from schoolchildren for advertising or other commercial purposes.” While this sounds innocuous enough, the Journal says that it’s being crafted “to take aim at Google’s growing business of providing basic software like email and word processing over the Internet, which, in turn, is a growing threat to Microsoft’s cash-cow suite of Office tools.”

The issue, however, is that it doesn’t seem that Google’s Apps for Education service uses any advertising at all despite being free of charge for schools. In fact, a Google spokesperson tells the Journal that Google only uses “student data to fine-tune spam filtering and sort emails for features like ‘priority inbox.’ “

While it’s possible that Google could require the use of ads once schools’ Apps for Education service agreements end, the company says it has no plans to do so at this time. However, this isn’t stopping Microsoft from trying to convince schools that Google Apps is too scary for students to use.

Doesn't this just seem like an act of desperation from the folks at Redmond? Since when does Microsoft need to compete by locking their competitors out of the marketplace by abusing the legal system? Oh right, now that they are practically buddies, Microsoft must be using Apple's playbook...

Source: BGR
 

jroc

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I just posted about this sillyness called Scroogled. hotmail and outlook.com has ads....both them and Gmail has opt out options....all 3 deliver ads based on search history, sites visited. Gmail is the only one that supposedly sends ads based on words in your email. Since I opted out long ago...all I see are sponsored ads. And I can set it to see 1 or none. None of the sponsored ads are relevant to anything in my emails.

MS conviently leaves the opt out part out tho.... MS is resorting to FUD...to get ahead....nice.

Stay classy Microsoft....stay classy.....
 
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xsylus

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While it's possible that Google's results for product searches are biased I've still had better luck finding great deals with Google than I ever had with Bing.
 

rherron

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I am an assistant principal at a high school in a Project RED school district of 39 schools with over 26,000 students. We're just what Microsoft is afraid of. Our district will be fully 1-to-1 next year (we are almost there now) with school-issued computers for every student. In the five high schools students will be issued a computer, a Chromebook, that they can take home. We're currently looking to reduce our massive inventory of Windows-based computers, and the licensed MS software on them, by 45% next school year. We've been fully immersed in the Googleverse for two years, for students and adults -- Gmail, Google Drive/Docs, etc. It's great. We're very, very lucky. Bye, bye Microsoft. Beginning next year, every teacher will have a single Windows-based desktop machine to run the classroom (the SmartBoard and the instructional software displayed on it), and we will continue to have a few PC classrooms and one Apple classroom where the curriculum dictates we teach Office or use specialized software like Photoshop. But that's it. Everything else, including all of the students' devices, will be on Chromebooks. If you're not in public ed, or if you don't have kids who are, you probably have no reason to follow what's going on. But our district, while clearly at the fore, is not unusual. Free, or nearly free software (I think we pay a nominal fee for the Google administered services we use) and $250 laptops are a good thing. The Chromebooks, by the way, are going to get even cheaper.
 

xeene

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windows 8 was a flop, windows phone was a flop. the only thing keeping msft afloat is office and windows 7, so yeah, they better protect their bread and butter. can't say i'm surprised though.
 

johnomaz

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I am an assistant principal at a high school in a Project RED school district of 39 schools with over 26,000 students. We're just what Microsoft is afraid of. Our district will be fully 1-to-1 next year (we are almost there now) with school-issued computers for every student. In the five high schools students will be issued a computer, a Chromebook, that they can take home. We're currently looking to reduce our massive inventory of Windows-based computers, and the licensed MS software on them, by 45% next school year. We've been fully immersed in the Googleverse for two years, for students and adults -- Gmail, Google Drive/Docs, etc. It's great. We're very, very lucky. Bye, bye Microsoft. Beginning next year, every teacher will have a single Windows-based desktop machine to run the classroom (the SmartBoard and the instructional software displayed on it), and we will continue to have a few PC classrooms and one Apple classroom where the curriculum dictates we teach Office or use specialized software like Photoshop. But that's it. Everything else, including all of the students' devices, will be on Chromebooks. If you're not in public ed, or if you don't have kids who are, you probably have no reason to follow what's going on. But our district, while clearly at the fore, is not unusual. Free, or nearly free software (I think we pay a nominal fee for the Google administered services we use) and $250 laptops are a good thing. The Chromebooks, by the way, are going to get even cheaper.

Our district has started to pilot the 1 to 1 computing with netbooks with Windows 7 on them and Office 2010. I work in the IT dept and it is a royal pain in the arse. Imaging them is a daunting task in itself. I currently manage about 300 netbooks at the high school I am the IT guy for and it is stupid how complicated these things can get. We use AT&T for the wireless service when they are away from wifi (/cough expensive and a waste IMO). I've tried to push Chromebooks for a while now but no one listens. A large amount of teachers prefer to use Google Docs (as I have tried to get them all to convert) because it is just easier. No version issues (.doc and .docx as an example), your work is available to you at home and all that jazz. Sadly, we have morons for administration in our district that would rather spend all our money on sports programs instead of bringing the districts tech up to par. I push and push and haunt my schools admins for money for computers and I barely get any.

Just a quick question for you if you happen to see this, how many techs does your district employ? Our district sounds to be about 1/3 the size of yours and we have a total of 9 techs for 15 schools and about 20,000 or so students.
 
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