MSN did that months ago…
What’s funny with this headline that I see over on Memeorandum is that MSN has been doing pretty much the exact same thing for months now (and has not one, but more than 20 colleges/universities signed up according to Adam Sohn, director of PR guy for MSN). Why didn’t anyone write a headline like “MSN goes after Outlook?” Hmmmm? A little Google love going on in the blogosphere? What’s behind that love?
Oh, maybe we should talk about blogger ethics again? Remember those Google ads on Paul’s blog? How do we know they haven’t colored his judgment? Some of my blogging friends make more money off of Google ads than I am paid by Microsoft (you’ll note that lots of people in my comment regularly question my ability to report honestly about things Microsoft related, why don’t these same people raise heck when employees of Google – and that’s what you are when you put a Google ad on your blog – give Google better PR than it deserves?). I notice that the press loves to go into a tizzy everytime a company sends out a free product, or takes bloggers on a free trip, or signs them up for a director or advisory role. Why isn’t anyone looking into the effect of on-blog advertising on our belief systems and reporting quality?
Here’s a question: if Microsoft had announced that, wouldn’t everyone have also reported on what every other company in the marketplace is doing without just reprinting the Microsoft press release? (Every single blogger on that Memeorandum entry is sponsored by Google ads. Except one, which is the official Google blog.)
I wonder how many other ideas we have that Google will get credit for?
And, please go back through my postings for the past few years. I’ve given Google kudo after kudo. For instance, their new desktop is quite nice. But I’m seeing a trend here and it’s quite worrying. I’d expect bloggers not to just reprint my press releases either!
Update: now this entry is at the top of Memeorandum, which is very weird.
Oh, and if you wanted a potential Outlook killer, don’t look at the domains. Look at Morfik. It lets you put Gmail on a thumb drive. Damn, why does a Microsoft guy have to tell you the real story with one of our competitors?
Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.
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