Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Thursday, February 10, 2005

  Marketing Dissonance

With google being sued for displaying competitors advertising on searches, I have to wonder what boundries will be drawn.

I've long been disturbed by MicroS$fts policy of plastering advertising on every page that talks about Linux. You read the text, usually praising Linux, and then, smack dab in the middle of it is a slickly produced ad from the evil empire, which, theoretically in the minds of the pap-drowned consumer, sets up some level of cognitive dissonance. The marketeers daydream of pavlovian responses in the markets they target, "a sexy girl holding office 2003 will distract that lovelorn geek from making a rational decision" they must think...

At one level, I'm amused by the ferocity and pervasiveness of the tactic - ad dollars from M$ are supporting technical publication of Linux materials - and at another level, I'm annoyed - I relentlessly filter out marketing statements in search of the truth.

It's been going on for about 3 years now, although I stopped noticing it after I started religiously using the Privoxy web filter, which in addition to getting rid of most advertisements on the web, amusingly transliterates M$ into "Microsuck". I've also set it up to change incidences of the word "consumer" into "citizen" - and perform "brand bingo" tasks... It really helps to have a tool like this filter out the truth from the marketing and I would suggest that far more IT managers and citizens and politicians would do well by installing it.

In the interim, I look forward to the results of this lawsuit.

 
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David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.


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