As Microsoft Shifts Its Privacy Rules, an Uproar Is Absent

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/technology/microsoft-expands-gathering-and-use-of-data-from-web-products.html?_r=1&ref=technology

by nsns • 14 years ago

30 19 14 years ago

nytimes.com

jiggy20113• 14 years ago

An uproar is probably absent because nobody really uses these services. Anybody remotely tech savvy ditched hotmail years ago and bing has never really taken off.

michielvoo• 14 years ago

Last year, Microsoft reported [1] that Hotmail has 360 million users. Earlier this year VentureBeat reported [2] numbers from comScore putting Hotmail ahead of Yahoo Mail and Gmail with 325 million users.

[1] http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2011/07/05...

[2] http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/28/gmail-hotmail-yahoo-email-...

jiggy20113• 14 years ago

IIRC, it's easier to get a hotmail account than a gmail account (or at least it used to be) because you have to go through some verification to get a Gmail account.

Hotmail seems to be popular with spammers and people creating throwaways probably for that reason.

dangrossman• 14 years ago

Hotmail is the world's largest webmail service. Bing has 15% of the search market; Google only has ~4 times that. Let's not pretend nobody uses these sites.

jiggy20113• 14 years ago

By "nobody" I mean very few people who go on the internet and create uproars. Hotmail is probably mainly used by grandmas and spammers.

lawdawg• 14 years ago

Bing only has 15% in the US. Globally, it has less than 5% where Google is closer to 90%, so yes, for all intents and purposes, very few people (who would be affected by this policy) use Bing.

mherdeg• 14 years ago

Hotmail is the market leader even among tech-savvy people in some non-U.S. markets. For example, they're very big in some Spanish-speaking countries.

pedalpete• 14 years ago

I use hotmail as my primary address. Why ditch it? I access my email via a client 99% of the time anyway. What tech savvyness am I missing?

pmb2• 14 years ago

Microsoft's motto is "Don't be so evil that the government can successfully break you into pieces". Google's motto is "don't be evil". We expect vile bullcrap from Microsoft.

lumberjack• 14 years ago

If you read the article, it's talking about how Microsoft changed it's privacy policies to match those of Google (who where met with uproar at their introduction) after publicly calling out Google on it's lack of value of privacy.

pmb2• 14 years ago

Right. My claim is: "Google does something evil" is news, "Microsoft does something evil" is not news.

NickFitz• 14 years ago

Single page link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/technology/microsoft-expan...

tinco• 14 years ago

"Company becomes as evil as Google" does not cause much uproar, because people don't really consider Google evil (yet).

I think what is more interesting is that apparently Microsoft feels it will make more money of competing with Google head to head with information revenue, than by 1-upping Google by having a more consumer-oriented privacy policy.

Would you think, keeping the recently revealed awesome outlook.com in mind, a good reminder campaign by Microsoft about how they _don't_ invade your privacy like Google does could have pulled you or your peers away from gmail (or Google-apps)?

Perhaps that would've been too much risk, this being the obvious easy way of making revenue..

mtgx• 14 years ago

""Company becomes as evil as Google" does not cause much uproar, because people don't really consider Google evil (yet)"

But there was an uproar when Google did that, and that's the point of the article. But I think it's as others have mentioned. People just don't use or care about Microsoft's services, so there's no one to be outraged by it.

fkdjs• 14 years ago

Microsoft realized these privacy rule changes allow for things like google now, so after criticizing google they realized their stupidity, then copied google, which is their current business plan as of late. I'm betting they're working on their own google now clone. So here we have another example of Microsoft missing the boat. Yet Microsoft tries to get the government to investigate google for anticopetition. Google is where they are due to being smarter than their competitors, and this is one of many examples.

The reason for no uproar is Microsoft is better at PR. When google introduced the privacy changes, Microsoft went into PR overdrive mode. You have to hand it to microsoft, when it comes to PR, they are innovative.

madrona• 14 years ago

Microsoft invests an amazing amount of resources into the creation and dissemination of FUD. Here's their internal manifesto: http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/comes-3096....

randomfool• 14 years ago

No uproar because the previous uproar was strongly backed by Microsoft. Google apparently doesn't care about funding a 'Microsoft is a bunch of hypocrites' campaign, which is probably for the better.

As Microsoft Shifts Its Privacy Rules, an Uproar Is Absent

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