Microsoft’s PR department LOVES the recent Gmail outages
It has been widely reported that Google’s Gmail has been having problems lately. Now it seems like Microsoft perhaps had a hand in spreading the news coverage, fanning the flames a bit.
Here is a quote from an InformationWeek article about the recent Gmail outages:
That didn’t stop a Microsoft spokesperson from reaching out to me to make sure I was aware of the current Google Apps problems. The spokesperson said to me in an e-mail, “The Gmail outage was reported (and buried) on a discussion board yesterday and a solution is expected (but not promised) by EOD today — 24 hrs later.”
He implied that the story wasn’t getting the press that it should.
So, basically, Microsoft’s PR people are trying to make sure that Google’s trouble gets as much attention as possible.
We were curious if this happens a lot. Do companies often contact journalists to point out the failings of their competitors?
We fired off this question to Eric Zeman, the journalist at InformationWeek who wrote the article we quoted from above, and here is what he told us:
I don’t know about other journalists, but I get emails like that all the time. Whenever something bad happens to a company, or a company performs really poorly at something, a competitor’s PR firm will send out a reminder about how good their product is in comparison.
I also get a lot of pitches from competing companies when someone announces good news. I’ll get a pitch worded similar to “So-and-so announced this today, but we’d like to offer a counterpoint to what they’re really doing and tell you why our stuff is better…”
So, judging by this, this kind of behavior seems to be common practice among many PR departments, and not just at Microsoft.
What do you think about this?
The New England Patriots held what seemed to be a commanding lead (17-15) with five minutes left of Super Bowl XLVI last night. But the New York Giants came back and managed to win with 21-17.
As Super Bowl 46 is approaching, fans will flock to the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana, and to TV sets around the world to follow the New York Giants battle it out with the New England Patriots.
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Daniel Howard
October 20th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
What, you expect THE MEDIA to do its job? Nahhh, their job is easier when competitors point out juicy dirt. The system is working as it works. Thanks for the reminder.
-d
Justin Campbell
October 20th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Seems a bit hypocritical. People are used to Microsoft products failing. All products fail sometimes.
I can tell you for sure that even with all of our redundancy and disaster recovery planning, our email servers are still down more than Gmail, even if only for patching.
_ck_
October 20th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
We’re mocking them but that PR person makes at least six figures a year doing that, with full health and dental. Sigh.
John, AceOnlineSchools
October 21st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
If my experience they are still failing at word of mouth:
http://aceonlineschools.com/microsoft-pr-firm-fails-at-word-of-mouth/
Ajay
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:26 am
is media is not doing their job or people who are wrting about gmail outage are microsoft’s pr.?
Paul Rasmussen
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:49 am
It it great that Gmail has added tasks.It goes a long way towards making it a competitor to outlook
Pitambharadharaya
February 8th, 2009 at 9:37 am
my God, i thought you were going to chip in with some decisive insght at the end there, not leave it with ‘we leave it to you to decide’.