Microsoft Takes Down Its Scroogled Anti-Google Website

Microsoft back in 2012 started its Scroogled campaign through which the company publicly attacked Google with a series of ads that warned consumers of Google's nosy ways. The Redmond giant in that year even launched a dedicated website (scroogled.com) for the campaign.

Winbeta reports that the domain scroogled.com now directs to a new website named 'Why Microsoft' with domain whymicrosoft.com.

For the uninitiated, Microsoft's Scroogled ads, which appeared online, on television and in print, depicted Google as a duplicitous company more interested in increasing profits and power than protecting people's privacy and providing unbiased search results.

The report points out, "Mark Penn was the man behind the campaign, which targeted newspapers, television, and social media. On March 2nd of 2014, we learned he was being promoted and the campaign slowly began fading away."

The new 'Why Microsoft' website seems to stress more on why Microsoft's services are better than those offered by the competition. "We combine decades of innovation to deliver high performance, low costs, and a competitive edge for your business. Explore how enterprise-proven solutions from Microsoft stack up against our competitors," notes the website.

Some of the popular Scroogled campaigns included an ad that targeted the Chromebook, Google's Chrome OS-based cloud-focused notebooks, where Microsoft listed the problems plaguing Chromebook devices. Another one targeted Google's Gmail ads and even explained how Google spammed users by inserting ads in their inboxes instead of protecting them from spam.

In one of the ad campaigns, Microsoft went beyond the online realm and offered merchandise with an anti-Google message.