Microsoft claims Google’s Chromebook ‘not a real laptop’ in ads
Microsoft is continuing its anti-Google ‘Scroogled’ campaign, this time taking aim at its Chromebook with the help of reality TV star Rick Harrison from the hit show ‘Pawn Stars’, who derides the device as “not a real laptop”.
The 95-second slot is shot in the style of the reality TV show and depicts a fictional actress attempting to trade-in her Chromebook with the notoriously tough negotiator at his Las Vegas-based pawn store in return for a ticket to Hollywood.
Harrison then goes on to label the Chromebook – a device from Google that runs web-based applications that can only be accessed while online – as “not a real laptop”.
He then explains how Microsoft desktop software packages such as Windows, Office, and even Apple’s iTunes, are more beneficial as they can be used while offline.
He says: “When you’re not connected, it’s pretty much a brick… without Wi-Fi it doesn’t do much at all, and when you are online Google tracks what you do so they can sell ads.”
Harrison then recites Microsoft’s current marketing mantra of how Google makes money out of consumer’s personal information, concluding: “That’s how you get ‘scroogled’.”
The online video is the latest execution in Microsoft’s anti-Google campaign – a marketing strategy that employs overtly negative tactics and last week saw it launch a ‘Scroogled’ clothing line.
Ironically, the ad is also hosted on the Google-owned video-sharing site YouTube.
The desktop software giant hopes the strategy will raise awareness of online personal privacy issues and help turn public opinion against Google’s methods of using consumers’ online behaviours to improve its ad targeting. A practice Microsoft claims is an “invasion of privacy”.
