Microsoft is once again attacking Google, this time for the "unfair" practices it uses for its Gmail email service.
Gmail is Outlook.com's biggest rival, and at every opportunity Microsoft tries to prove to everyone that its email service is better than Google's.
Microsoft therefore states that Gmail and Google in general do not respect users' privacy, as it provides ads based on the text included in each email message.
“Google goes through every email in Gmail, looking for keywords, so it can serve targeted ads to Gmail users. And there’s no way to turn off this invasion of your privacy. With Outlook.com it’s different – we’re not trying to serve you ads through your emails,” Microsoft says.
Additionally, Microsoft has launched a petition titled “Tell Google to stop reading your emails to sell ads,” with the petition aiming to collect a total of 25,000 signatures from users around the world.
"Emails are personal – and people feel that reading their emails for advertising purposes is off limits," said Stefan Weitz, senior director of Microsoft Online Services.
While the Outlook.com service does not appear to "read" every email to serve ads to its users, Microsoft seems to forget that it does more or less the same thing since the subject line of emails and all web searches are still monitored, with the aim of providing better ads.
Google has yet to comment on Microsoft's public complaint, but given the fact that the company typically doesn't respond to these types of attacks, it will likely remain tight-lipped once again.
