All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
The Microsoft Store's new "Scroogled" section includes eight products that'll make you blush on Microsoft's behalf. There's a t-shirt that shows a Chrome logo in a trench coat and another that casts it as a scary spider. There's a hat that says "Scroogled" and a mug, again with the Chrome logo, that say "Keep calm while we steal your data." The mug, in fact, is sold out–John Gruber says he's hearing the products are proving popular with Google employees.
>At best, it's a distraction. At worst, it reeks of desperation.
Microsoft's intermittently been trying to make "Scroogled" a thing since late last year, when it started leaking ads focusing on Gmail and its system of serving ads based on keywords in your emails. It's worth noting that all of this silliness started shortly after Microsoft hired Mark Penn, a notoriously pugnacious political strategist who worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Penn was the chief strategist during Clinton's disastrous bid for the Presidency in 2008, a campaign renowned for its internal turmoil–much of it centered around Penn. His attack-first plan for Microsoft doesn't seem much different than the one he had for Hillary Clinton. As reported in the Atlantic's post-mortem of the 2008 Democratic primary, this was the guy urging that she target Obama's 'lack of American roots.'
It all comes across as pathetic on Microsoft's part. Brands are supposed to have personalities, but they're not supposed to be petty. Microsoft may not be the goliath it once was—especially when the adversary you're talking about is Google—but pushing out a raft of gag products that fall short of actually being funny is beneath them. At best, it's a distraction from what the company should be doing—working on good software, services, and hardware products. At worst, it reeks of desperation.
It also seems half-hearted. The Scroogled products are definitely an official Microsoft offering, but they're not featured prominently anywhere else on the website. In fact, I couldn't even find a way to find the Scroogled section without plugging in the URL to access it directly. That, in a way, makes it even more disagreeable–an insult muttered instead of shouted. (Last night, savvy tech observer Ben Thompson tweeted "I don’t know a single MSFT employee who isn’t mortified by the whole Scroogled campaign.")
//www.youtube.com/embed/-Cr6AgUo764
The fact that Google sucks up all the user data it can find is no great secret–that's the price you pay for the company's free software and services. And it is indeed a troubling aspect of a company that's increasingly at the center of our digital lives, especially in light of the tech industry's coziness with agencies like the NSA. If you were running a political campaign against Google, you'd definitely want to exploit that angle. In politics, you have to make it personal.
But webmail and consumer electronics are not a political campaign. Some cheeky leaked videos are one thing. Setting up shop with tacky attack products is another. This type of mudslinging may work in politics, but it's embarrassing when deployed as corporate branding.
Images: Microsoft.com
