Gmail Man Parody Goes Viral (VIDEO)

If you didn't already know that Google snoops through the emails you send from your Gmail account, one company seems to have taken extreme measures to let you know.

ZDNet first shared the parody video -- reportedly previewed at Microsoft's recent annual sales conference -- that takes some not-so-subtle shots at the questionable privacy of Gmail, in hopes of luring customers into buying Office 365.

So far, there's been no official confirmation that Microsoft produced the video, but the Internet appears to have made up its mind already and ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley seems convinced it's "the real deal."

The tag-line for the video is: "Your email is your business. Google makes it theirs."

(Scroll down to watch.)

The video the begins by explaining the following scene is the opposite experience users will receive from using Office 365. Enter the Gmail Man, the real life embodiment of Google, strolling the streets looking through emails for key-words like "volcano", "zucchini" and "lava."

When confronted by an outraged little girl, demanding to know how he can read through everyone's mail, he explains, "Well, sometimes when a person really loves their Gmail very, very much, the two get together and an ad is born."

"You can't do that," the little girl cry cries, only to be told that of course he can, he's the Gmail Man.

The video then follows Gmail Man to an office where he embarrasses a woman by telling her to get up. Gmail Man explains he's been scanning her email for keywords like "burning and sensation," and produces an ad for a cream that clear up her problems.

But since Google's keyword scanning isn't even all that accurate, those words Gmail Man found have been taken completely out of context. The woman explains she doesn't need the cream since she was talking about burning a lasagna that her husband found sensational.

The kicker, the woman tells Gmail Man what he's doing is wrong, to which he responds "who cares?"

This video isn't the first time Microsoft has gone after Google for allegedly violating privacy. Last year Microsoft produced a video claiming that "Google Chrome steals your privacy" to help promote Internet Explorer 8.

And Google has taken its own shots at Microsoft.

In February, Google accused Microsoft of copying Google's search results with their own search engine, Bing. And no doubt the relationship between the companies soured after Google's 2010 announcement they were ditching the Windows operating system, following hacking attacks in China.

WATCH:

Comments

[Rock Et SteelBuildings]

01:36 PM on 08/03/2011

My company has worked on trying to produce a viral video for a long time, but ours (which you can see at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NiiZVT6lm8 ) is probably nowhere near as effective as anything Google can put out or Gmail....

[Alex G O]

05:50 AM on 08/02/2011

I must admint that this video is funny. But what is not so funny is that gmail can access your account I don't care if is a ad there (adblock can handle with it). I think there are some privacy issues, But even there is a solution take an email client like thunderbird and encrypt your message.

[RecreationalPilot]

10:39 AM on 08/01/2011

I used Google's AdWords a month ago.

The other day, I received a fraudulent email stating that a company called "Arvato Financial Services Limited" was going to debit my bank account, when I had a surplus reserve in my AdWord account.

I called AdWord support and the woman I spoke to mentioned that she saw the email I was reading the email and then asked me to forward it to her inbox.

That is the first time I ever heard someone in ANY support group admit they were actively browsing a person's email. Still no word on whether my bank account will get debited, as it looked like they had the last 4 digits of my bank account.

[beachbum07]

04:23 PM on 07/31/2011

I would use gmail if every email wasn't taken! I need a professional email with my name in it.
With gmail, I would need to have 3 or more numbers in it along with my name making it a very long email. I hate that gmail doesn't recycle their emails. I once emailed [e-mail] (using my real name of course) and it bounced back to me saying there was no email. Whenever I can get my name with one or less numbers in it, then I will switch to gmail. Till then I will keep my @live which really is not bad.

[Bucket-Of-Love]

09:50 PM on 07/31/2011

You can always prepend 'myname' with another word and avoid the entire numbers thing.

For example, if your name is Mary Smith, you could have '[e-mail], or perhaps '[e-mail]'.

[artist-53]

01:19 PM on 07/31/2011

G-Mail, what the #$@# are you doing scanning my email for words so you can sell advertizement. Can I open your mail as well and scan it for $#@!(*& sell options to advertizing companies? &*^ you gmail for all you do

So I sent it to my self and these are the ads I got on the right hand column

Ads
Ice Cream Truck Ads
Bring Your Message to Neighborhoods Full Wraps and Customizations
Comcast® - Official Site
Get TV w/ On Demand, Faster Internet & Reliable Home Phone
Brown Mackie College
Free Original Song Lyrics »
Lyrics »
AD Google com »
Find a Song Lyrics
(I removed links)

It's a huge game .

They tell advertiser's how much space that can be monopolize on the internet.Thereby increasing the viewing power of ads.

Which allows companies to over charge for ads, simply by the amount of sites they can be placed on.And when they factor in visitor stats, they can name their price in terms of ad placement.

There is no guarantee of selling a product,

But there is a guarantee from the one selling the space, that they can increase prices of ads on the net.

Theory is , they all think because an ad is there on a page, people will click, and purchase a product.

It's an industry made for and by the giants in the internet industry.

Ad co.'s use old Madison ave Freud techniques, but it can't possibly apply in this tech.

[J-Rome]

07:48 AM on 07/31/2011

"Google says that while this notification will be rolling out to users gradually over the coming days, the personalized ads won’t actually go live for around a month. In the mean time, users can opt-out of the new system through Gmail’s settings panel (the default is that you’re opted-in)."

Not certain why Microsoft invests so much time and effort bad mouthing the products of their competitors with all the issues they have with their products. Also, the ability of a user to opt-out of Google's system makes Microsoft look foolish for putting out this video.

[Wide Stance]

10:44 AM on 07/31/2011

Yeah, it's Microsoft that looks "foolish." Hilarious.
--

Google buries that under settings, "web clips", "Show my web clips above the Inbox."

They want you to know how to turn off display of *ads* INSTINCTIVELY, so they make you opt out, and call them "web clips." (Of course, they are still scanning your email. That can't be turned off.)

[Myshkin57]

09:19 PM on 07/31/2011

The ads are live now. I was gchatting with a friend about going to NYC and guess what flights showed up that instant?

[sheeple999]

03:53 AM on 07/31/2011

Try Apple's MobileMe. I've been using it for years and am real happy with it.

[Wide Stance]

10:01 AM on 07/31/2011

Good advice.

[Wide Stance]

10:24 AM on 07/31/2011

MobileMe is becoming iCloud, and will be free:

Free email, access to all your apps, books, docs, photos, music, contacts, calendar, automatically synced to all your devices, and automatically backed up.

All that WITHOUT DATA MINING.

[Notoriety]

01:53 AM on 08/01/2011

A good rule of thumb is "If the service is free, you aren't their customer." In other words, what is the incentive for a company to offer you stuff for free? Charity?

For Apple, iCloud is most clearly useful as a sort of selling point for all their hardware products, but there isn't any guarantee that it won't start becoming interested in user trends, etc.

[ponyloco]

01:09 AM on 07/31/2011

gmail = free with minimally obtrusive ads...

office 365 = pay and probably sucks...

[sheeple999]

03:56 AM on 07/31/2011

microsoft products always suck. Plus, they lead the way when it comes to data mining. If you're unfortunate enough to have to run windows on your computer, you're already sharing your goodies with them.

[sazbad]

12:06 AM on 07/31/2011

What the video depicts is true for Gmail. But this depends on the user. Some user don't bother whether Google reads their email or not. Some gets paranoid of this kind of privacy intrusion. What Google is doing is not right. It's like some company knows what you are using inside your house. We get random ad flyer everyday in our mail box. That's fine. But can we tolerate if a company puts a surveillance tag on their product to monitor how we use it?

So whatever Gmail is doing is not legal as it is data mining based the content of the email. That means your emails are not private and they are continuously monitoring it. If hotmail does it then it's wrong too.

I don't like Google is trying to making more money by intruding peoples privacy more day by day. If we go to Googles home page and search something they can track it because it's me who went to his webpage. But i don't want Google to track me when i am browsing to a different webpage but they are tracking it because i am browsing on Chrome logging into my Google account.

This is nothing less than a malware. If anybody can explain how it's different i would be very obliged.

[Hunter Robbins]

10:43 PM on 07/30/2011

Funny that Microsoft fails to tell you they do exactly the same thing, but that they also steal search engine results from Google and disguise them as Bing's.

Sorry, Microsoft. You sucked 10 years ago and you still suck. The only difference is that Google is modern, you're still stuck in the 90's and still quite pathetically lame at everything you do.

[Rich Phitzwell]

04:06 PM on 07/30/2011

Been using Google products for years for many clients. I've always known they scan the emails and it never bothered me. If Ms ever had all the functionality the gmail has then they can talk but as of now exchange is too much for small businesses and Google wide range of free business serfices outweighs the negatives

[Wide Stance]

03:33 PM on 07/30/2011

Out come the Google apologists. It's fallacious to attack Microsoft for what Google is doing.

[Estevan Benson]

04:18 PM on 07/30/2011

I guess I fall under apologist. Most users should understand how Gmail works. Considering that, you're volunteering your data. You're either cool with it or not. I don't think there's any argument to make past that point. I personally prefer targeted ads because I do come across useful information.

[Wide Stance]

08:31 PM on 07/30/2011

Let's get the facts straight, not every email provider is mining your email. Only one provider that I know of does that--Google. That's not "how email works." That is more apology.

The argument to make is that Google should be open about data mining your email. As it stands, Google doesn't even mention data mining in their privacy policy. Not once.

If they put "We are reading your email" at the top of your inbox do you think it would have an effect on subscribers?

[TomHunter]

12:35 PM on 07/30/2011

Nice try, Microsoft. I still trust Google's products more than your malware-infested products with terrible security. You lost my trust a decade ago when I last paid money for anything you made.

[Wide Stance]

03:35 PM on 07/30/2011

Is Google looking over your shoulder, or aren't they?

That's the issue here: Are they reading your email?

(Answer--yes.)

[subcon]

10:52 AM on 07/30/2011

There is no such thing as a free email service. Google has to generate revenue to pay for the not-so-free servers residing in the not-so-free data centers using not-so-free electricity to deliver your free email, and this is done via ads, something that hypocritical Micro$oft's hotmail does as well. Anyone that believes their email is private is naive.

[Shawn Wolfe]

10:37 AM on 07/30/2011

Love how the Gmail man walks in to CONTOSO. Microsoft never changes.