Gmail Man video mocks Google in the name of Microsoft
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A video making fun of Google’s email service, Gmail, has been posted online, and it appears it could have been produced by one of the search giant’s major rivals -- Microsoft.
The video, which features a character called Gmail Man, was leaked by an attendant of Microsoft’s internal Microsoft Global Exchange sales conference, according to the website ZDNet.com, which reported about it and posted it on YouTube on Thursday.
Throughout the video, Gmail Man goes through people’s emails ‘just skimming,’ as he says, for keywords in order to target advertising to users. Fictional users of the service question the ethics of his actions, asking whether it’s wrong to go through people’s private messages, to which he replies, ‘Who cares?’
‘Well, sometimes when a person really loves their Gmail very, very much, the two get together,’ Gmail Man says at one point, ‘and an ad is born.’
The video mentions Microsoft’s new cloud service, Microsoft Office 365, and shows the offices of a business named Contoso Ltd., which ZDNet says is a fictional company often used in demos for Microsoft products.
With Office 365, which the company announced last month, Microsoft is stepping into familiar territory for Google -- the cloud -- and competing with the search giant’s Google Apps service to offer online software to consumers and businesses.
Microsoft did not a return a call seeking information regarding its involvement in the video (or lack thereof).
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-- Salvador Rodriguez
