Microsoft Office 365 video campaign takes a dig at Gmail

While Google tries recruiting people to make use of its email service through the Email Intervention website, Microsoft has released a video telling consumers why not to use the service. While it doesn’t directly tell people to stop using Gmail, the comedic video (shot in the style of a 50s sitcom) informs consumers about how Google invades your privacy. It features the Gmail Man: a fake mailman that reads everybody’s emails to symbolize Gmail’s ad-generation, which is based on keywords that are used in your emails.

In case you didn’t realize it, have a look at the text ads in Gmail next time you log on, and you’ll see that some of the ads are strangely relevant to what you’re writing about. Microsoft highlights this fact in the Gmail Man video and concludes it with a message implying that Office 365 doesn’t resort to such practices, thus giving people a better sense of security (and encouraging them to choose Office 365 over Gmail and other Google products). To be fair, the video wasn’t intended for the public, but yet it has managed to leak out. Check it out for yourself: