![Microsoft slams Google with ‘Scroogled’ merchandise line](http://natmonitor.com/news/wp-content/uploads/microsoft1.jpg)
One t-shirt shows a Google-themed spider that beckons, "Step Into Our Web."
Microsoft is declaring war against Google.
Or at least, that’s how it seems from the software giant’s latest set of consumer merchandise products. The development is hardly surprising. Earlier this year, Microsoft launched an advertising campaign that coined the word “Scroogled” in attempt to draw potential search engine customers away from Google – the world’s preeminent search engine – and toward Microsoft’s own “Bing” search engine.
The commercials contended that Google’s search results were either bought and paid for by major corporations or derived from data that Google had obtained by scanning customers’ emails, while Bing’s were simply based on relevance and page popularity. In essence, getting “Scroogled” meant falling into Google’s web of corporate greed and privacy invasion rather than using another search engine (Bing, of course) that truly had its customers’ best interests at heart.
As with any advertising campaign, the Bing commercials seemed more about Microsoft positing their search engine as a superior product than they did about starting a corporate war. Now however, according to a report published on Mashable, Microsoft is taking its Scroogled campaign one step further, and it’s entirely possible that things could get ugly between Microsoft and Google as a result.
The new consumer merchandise line – simply titled “Scroogled” – sees Microsoft making some fairly serious accusations about Google’s liberal use of customer data. Some of the products – a t-shirt and a baseball cap, to name a few – are innocuous, with the word “Scroogled” emblazoned across the front in the popular, multi-colored Google font.
A few of the other products, though, may not be so harmless. One t-shirt shows a Google-themed spider that beckons, “Step Into Our Web.” The product description is even more direct, stating “Google’s the spider. You’re the fly. You probably know what happens next.”
Another design, available as both a t-shirt and a coffee mug, reads “Keep Calm While We Steal Your Data,” with text fashioned after a popular internet meme and the Google Chrome logo leering above it all. And a third design, which bedecks the Google Chrome logo in the hat and overcoat of a shadowy detective or investigator, darkly reads, “We’re Watching You.”
“Do you use Google Search? Or Gmail? Or Google Chat? Or Chrome?” the product description for the latter t-shirt design asks? “Then Google is watching you…all the time.”
Whether the Microsoft merchandise campaign is as malicious as it seems remains to be seen. Neither Microsoft nor Google has yet made an official statement regarding the line, though Forbes has stated that Google employees got a major kick out of the products.
“LOL! It’s already sold out,” one Google employee wrote in regards to the “Keep Calm While We Steal Your Data” mug. “If only the Surface is this popular,” he added, making a dig at Microsoft’s flagship tablet, which has thus far failed to find a substantial user base.
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