The video floated around on, ironically, Google’s YouTube, because of a leak from an internal sales conference last July, but now Microsoft has posted the scare-mongering crap on their official YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts. It’s Microsoft truly exploiting the fear caused by Google actually telling customers that they’re changing their privacy policy. And in my opinion, I’d much rather Google tell me in an easy way what they’re doing, which is what they’ve done, instead of just changing it and making me accept it in a harder-to-read slab of text, something Microsoft would probably do.
Not only does Google offer perfectly fine privacy policies, with the claims of this video false (Google AdSense does analyse emails, but in no way is it done or seen by employees), but their Google Apps that you pay for, just like paying for Office 365, have no ads. It’s comparing a free service to a paid service. And Google could easily be the best company to hold your data, with new ways to free it, such as in Google Takeout, where you can export almost all of your data and go somewhere else.
Also, never mind the fact that free Hotmail users probably have the same privacy in regards to ads as free Gmail users, but Microsoft would never let that get in the way of a good story now, would they? Neither would a number of other media outlets.
Either way, the video is below, and if you want some real facts about Gmail and Google, read their blog post. And remember, don’t listening to misinformed people and competitors. They probably just want a page view.
Update: Also, Microsoft also has personalised advertising. So does Facebook. And you can Opt-out to Google and Microsoft’s personalised advertising at any time. Just Google it.