Apple Buying Ads Against Windows 7 Searches

[Fubar]

Get Out More !!! seriously people....

[bobbba]

Yes because owning things from a business that calls the competition cancer and communism is vastly better, eh?

Show me where that happened

Bill Gates compared open source software to communism and Steve Balmer said it was a cancer.

Link

[hdood]

Microsoft has been running similar context sensitive ads against competitors for YEARS. This is hardly news. Everyone does it. Business as usual.

[(Spork)]

lol @ apple

[zagor]

Not only does it not work, but on that exact same search, I get 137,000,000 hits, not 136.

I call fake.

it is not fake...when I did the search myself the second sponsored link turned out to be Apple's site

[Eric Veteran]

I'm no attorney, and I don't even play one on TV, but I'd think that Apple using Microsoft's trademarks to sell their own product is probably a no-no... :p

[CelticWhisper]

As marketing stunts go, this isn't really that bad. At least, it's nothing companies haven't done for ages before this. Pretty much the computer equivalent of "Put down that Coke, try all new Blackberry-Vanilla Pepsi!"

Obnoxious, yes, but that's marketing for you.

[epple]

They sure are scared...

[+Warwagon MVC]

You never see ads on TV anymore where they "Show off" Their products. All they do in every add is slam the competition.

[Guest]

Typical... Not showing up for me though, but if they did I would click on the link a few times.

Waste apples google ad credit.

Edited November 2, 2009 by Guest

[thefarewellnote]

Just saw that they (Apple have an ad on CNN.com)

http://www.cnn.com/

Taking the Windows 7 is bad - move to Apple instead approach

[MrChainsaw]

Apple face it, you lost.

[Denis W. Veteran]

^ What the hell... that's a huge amount of ad space Apple has :|

[Mega Goatlord]

Every time I see something like this, my sig gets proven more and more.

[dead.cell]

You never see ads on TV anymore where they "Show off" Their products. All they do in every add is slam the competition.

Not true exactly. When it comes to Macs and OS X, sure, that's completely true. Their iPod / iPhone advertising on the other hand does a great job showing off their product. This is what baffles me to be honest, as they do so well in one area, yet fail completely with their main hardware and operating system.

I've got friends that don't really even care to get involved in the Mac vs. PC wars, but it's pretty sad when they come to saying, "Have you seen those Apple ads? They're really getting out of hand..." On top of that though, I'm still trying to find an "average joe" who has even heard of OS X. When I ask them about the PC vs Mac commercials, many have told me they don't even pay them any attention because they don't get it. Apple, your customers can't make comparisons when they don't understand what exactly you want them to compare! This is pretty pathetic given that it's their main product they've been selling for years and years...

iPhone and iPod ads are completely different though, in that you get to see what their product is directly, the things it can do, and so forth. They look nice, appear simple and easy to use, and well... generate hype. They quite literally make people say, "I want that!"

As for this Google ad, I find it quite displeasing, as ads are supposed to be set up around what the user is interested in.

[the evn show]

I'm no attorney, and I don't even play one on TV, but I'd think that Apple using Microsoft's trademarks to sell their own product is probably a no-no...

In the UK, Canada, and the USA this would not constitute trademark infringement - it was sorted out a decade ago (Playboy v Netscape) and nearly every year since. The case most specific to this would be Google v Rescuecom.

The court makes it clear that <company x> has a right to buy advertising based on <company y> keywords and that google is allowed to sell them.

Apple face it, you lost.

Apple has enough cash in the bank to purchase every share of Dell. Given that those two are in nearly identical business: computers, media players, screens, accessory bits, networking gear, etc. how does that count as losing?

[StandingInAlley]

This is really cheap and sad. I'm a Mac user and own a lot of Apple products but this is just sad :/

[Pharos]

Not getting it over here, but searching Bing for " Mac os download" does show a Windows 7 ad

Not going to solely criticize Apple for this since Microsoft is apparently doing the same :shifty: Pretty ridiculous IMO, but oh well. That's competition.

[dead.cell]

Not getting it over here, but searching Bing for " Mac os download" does show a Windows 7 ad

I'm not, but I did get one on Google. Tip: use better keywords. Having "OS download" in there alone is going to bring you less specific results, especially considering the OS that can run on a Mac can be either OS X or Windows (Linux too I believe, right?).

When properly searching "Mac OS X download", the results are perfectly clear.

[bob_c_b]

You mean like this;

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009...c-users-too.ars

Seriously, both sides are pretty rotten in the "throwing feces on the other" so I wouldn't go calling out either of them worse.

Yea, but most of that was true, even as an Apple owner I have to admit that.