To put these changes in perspective, Google offered a clear example: 

Maybe you’re a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2 GB in Gmail. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want.

Check out a screenshot of the new storage management tool and soon-to-come storage option changes below: 

When I saw a TV ad using this strange word scroogled, I wasn't quite sure what it meant, so I looked it up in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. I got this reply: “The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary.”

Frustrated, I thought maybe the dictionary hadn’t been updated recently. So l pursued an alternative way of exploring the word’s usefulness: Microsoft Word. The software redlined the word, meaning scroogle is not a genuine word.

I don't Google. As a loyal ex-Microsoft employee, I use the all-knowing Bing. So I challenged the oracle-engine from Redmond to find out what this mysterious word without meaning (or, should I say, meaningless word) stands for.

I soon discovered that “scroogled” is the centerpiece of an advertising campaign in which Microsoft warns Internet users of ugly consequences if they don't let go of their despicable habit of Gmailing. It soon dawned on me that the word must have been invented by somebody who wanted to avoid saying “scr(ew G)oogle” in public.

(See also: Undeterred By Failure, Microsoft Vows To 'Scroogle' Google Some More)

A dirty word indeed, so my kids will definitely be forbidden to use it in school. But I decided to add it, just for fun, to my Word vocabulary.

What Is Microsoft Thinking?

That Microsoft is using this silly word in TV and online ads nevertheless remains a conundrum. I'd thought the company had stopped nastily smearing competitors right after its painful antitrust experience. Now I'm wondering if this inexplicable little word is just a simple faux pas, or a sign that the company is returning to its innately competitive, if not exactly pleasant, roots.

I broke my own rules and turned to Google’s search engine to dig deeper. I was surprised to find a richer and more revealing trove of information than Bing had offered me.

I learned that Microsoft’s ad campaign is designed to lure Gmail customers into the realm of Microsoft’s recently launched and updated Outlook e-mail system. (This is a replacement for its old Hotmail product, which I've  used for eons.)

Mark Penn, Idea Man

The person behind the ad campaign is Mark Penn, who made his mark as a political operative and is best known for his involvement in Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign.

He joined Microsoft last year because its CEO, Steve Ballmer, was reportedly impressed by Penn’s novel ideas of how to present Microsoft’s products to the public. I'm surprised the company hired him, knowing from a most trusted source that he was one of the most useless consultants Microsoft hired during its antitrust trial. He apparently believes that where search engines are concerned, “people these days are making a choice, just like they’re making a political choice.”

So here we have it. What works well in politics should, according to him, work as well for Microsoft in the 21st century. The notion of this software-driven company resorting to politics is nothing novel. The only surprise for me is that its latest target is now its current and former customer base.

(See also: Incoming! Microsoft Launching Another Pathetic Smear Campaign Against Google)

Smearing a competitor might work in politics, as we witnessed again in the last presidential election, because in that universe the word truth does not hold a lot of water. The software business is quite different. Ease of use, performance and affordable prices have long been the foundation for success. In short: Better products eventually win.

In Software, It's All About Products

Remember how Microsoft once beat another fierce competitor called Netscape? Its browser, Navigator, reigned supreme for nearly three years until Internet Explorer caught up and the development community and the pundits eventually regarded Explorer as superior. Only then did its public usage increase, and only then did Netscape lose the race. This is a lesson Microsoft needs to recall.

To retain customers, companies often build marketing campaigns around FUD — that is, by spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about competitive offerings while promising future improvements for their own. It’s pretty nasty when you're on the receiving end, but if you have an inferior product this tactic can work by delaying customer defections, buying you time to beef up your offering.

But the Scroogled campaign doesn't follow this well-known pattern. It seems to be built solely on fear. Has Microsoft’s obsessive-compulsive disorder spread so far that it can’t get past fear to uncertainty and doubt?

Oh, no! Google has the audacity to match ads to words found in a machine search on customer emails! Therefore Microsoft wants Gmail users to believe that their privacy is endangered. My Google search, however, quickly discovered what Microsoft states in its own usage policy:

Information about your past online activity, or the activity of others using this computer, might be used to help predict your interests and to select the ads that you see. But you’re in control and can opt-out of receiving personalized ads at any time.

Google allows its customers to opt-out as well. So what is there to fear?

If Microsoft could match Google’s smarter technology, the word scroogle would have never been invented. A couple of years ago, Microsoft bought an Internet-wide advertising platform by buying aQuantive for $6.3 billion, but then couldn’t make it work properly to beat Google and subsequently wrote off nearly the entire value of the acquisition.

Now, guided by a political smear artist, the company has to resort to a fear campaign where very little fear exists. If you're the sort to worry that the postal service knows where you live, then you might be scared about the ads Google derives from your email content. The government, under the Patriot Act, snoops way more intensely — and for uglier reasons.

Outlook Is Actually Better!

Even more disturbing, when you compare the new version of Outlook with Gmail, Outlook already wins. Instead of designing a campaign designed to stir up privacy anxiety among Gmail users, the energy should have been directed towards making Outlook usage most desirable. Microsoft could have challenged its marketing folks to create additional incentives for switching to Outlook, instead of wasting between $30 million and $90 million of shareholders’ money on useless slander.

Consumers make their product decisions in private, helped by their friends’ recommendations and information derived from the Internet. Most seem to consider Google to be a couple of notches less evil than the bully from Redmond, which is why Microsoft’s scare tactics won't work.

There's another reason Microsoft’ energy is totally misdirected. Neither Microsoft nor Google represent a political party. The process of choosing the right software isn't really comparable to voting in political elections, where fiscal or social principles in general determine the outcome.

Therefore I will keep the ugly word scroogle in my dictionary just to remind me what not to do in sales and marketing. A company and a CEO that resorts to a political smear campaign to promote its products and services has most definitely seen better days.

I was reminded of this the other day when I had to contact Google for help recovering my daughter's email account, which had been the target of a hack that rivals Mat Honan's, and was the account the hacker used to take control of her Facebook account, among others. After an hour of battling with the hacker for control of her account (In between posting vile things about her to everyone in her address book, he kept up a conversation with me over IM, which was... eerie), I turned on two-step authentication and halted the problem. But in my rush to get rid of him, I saved all the application-specific passwords Google provides but neglected to note the password I used for my daughter's Gmail account.

Stupid, I know. But it was a heat-of-the-moment sort of thing. I was in a panic.

Turning To Google

Sadly, Google proved ill-equipped and indisposed to help resolve the issue. Due to the frenetic activity around my daughter's account, Google wouldn't allow us the normal means for recovering a password. Fine. I figured I'd call Google for help.

No, really. Stop laughing. It turns out you can actually call someone at Google. (But not at Facebook.) No, you won't find a phone number on Google's support page. That might encourage users to actually call Google. But in a world that uses software without paying for it, you're the product, not the customer.

I did find a number eventually, but it's apparently only available in cases of exceptional trouble recovering one's account. Ironically, it required me to sign up for Google Wallet to get the phone number, even though the stated price was $0.00. (Note to Google: that may well have been a great time to force me into signing up for an ancillary service, given how desperate I was, but it didn't endear you to me.)

Thirty minutes later, my daughter and I had talked with a nice customer support woman, somewhere (when I told her I was in Chicago, she said "I believe that is considered a large American city?"). She promised to have a response to me within two days.

It has now been almost a week and I've had no response. So I emailed Google to check on the status (I didn't have a tracking number so I just sent the email and prayed). A day later, I received this response:

Unfortunately, based on the information you provided, we’re unable to return the account at this time. Here are some of the reasons why we can’t return the account at this time...

The reasons given don't actually apply in my case, and in no way reference the extensive information we gave over the phone. Maddening.

Eric Knorr highlights the deteriorating quality of support in the bring-your-own-device world. But that's nothing compared to the nearly nonexistent support for anyone stuck in user land. Would I pay for better support for my Gmail account? Yes. But can I pay? No. I pay through my eyeballs, when it turns out I'd prefer to pay with my wallet. Vendors seem to respond better to that kind of direct cash incentive.

Given how much of our lives we put into free online services, I suspect this is going to become an increasingly serious issue. But until vendors give us a way to pay, we're always going to be an unsupported "product."

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

You have yours, and Robert Scoble has his. The Rackspace Startup Liaison, blogger and hyper-geeky tech evangelist talked to ReadWrite about the eight apps he uses every day and can't live without. If you follow the Scobelizer online, much of his list isn't terribly shocking, but it's always interesting to see where well-known figures in tech spend their digital attention and limited time. 

8. Quora 

Quora may have fallen from its buzz peak, but it's still popular among many of the early adopters that flocked to it in the first place. Scoble is one of them. He still routinely uses the site, often answering questions posed by other users. The Q&A site is still frequented by Silicon Valley figures and others who work in tech, so it's still loaded with interesting threads that sometimes contain rather candid insights.

7. Google+

Your normal, non-techie friends may not be hanging out on Google+ much yet, but it's a fast-rising social platform beloved by many in the media and technology scenes. Robert Scoble, quite naturally, loves it. "My friends aren't on it either, but the people who are I quite enjoy and the search engine here is better," says Scoble.

6. YouTube

It's hardly a cutting edge, under-the-radar app, but the world's biggest user-generated video site is a staple in Scoble's digital diet. Just like Google Maps, the newer version of YouTube for iOS is light years better than what used to ship on iPhones and iPads by default. 

Like the rest of us, Scoble consumes his fair share of YouTube videos via its iOS and Android apps, but he also publishes his own videos to more than 12,000 subscribers, who have clicked the play button a cumulative 5.5 million times. Damn, Scoble!

5. Waze

There are a number of traffic apps for the iPhone, but few are as widely beloved as Waze. The crowd-sourced navigation app has been a huge hit among iOS-using drivers like Scoble, who cites it as "the best way to see traffic on the road ahead (and cops too)."

4. Flipboard 

Flipboard hasn't evolved that radically since its launch in 2010, but it remains a mainstay on the docks of many an iPad user. Thankfully what the team launched almost three years ago was extremely well-designed and plugs in to just about any source of Web content you can think of. 

Flipboard's heavy focus on social integrations makes it ideal for Twitter mavens like Scoble. "It takes some setting up for someone like my dad, who doesn't know what Twitter is for," he says.

As much as he loves Flipboard, Scoble says Prismatic is a close second when it comes to news apps - to which he can't seem to break his addiction.

3. Twitter

@Scobleizer has a pretty sizable following on Twitter. On his various devices, he prefers the home-baked official mobile app to third party clients like Tweetbot and Twitterific. He uses it more or less like the rest of us to, to manage lists, read tweets, reply to people and post his own updates. 

When asked which social platform he would give up if he was forced to lose one, he told us he'd get rid of Twitter before losing Google+ or Facebook. "That said, you'd pretty much have to kill me first."

2. Gmail 

Google has been busy revamping its apps for iOS, and the work has paid off. Google Maps and YouTube are both way better than the default apps that used to ship on iOS, and Google Drive, Google+ and Gmail follow the same new visual language, each boasting its own list of impressive features. 

Indeed, if you're a Gmail user, it's hard to get too enamored with the iPhone's default Mail app when Google has its own, far more delightful offering. 

"This has better notifications and gives me better access to Gmail's features like labels and spam marking capabilities," Scoble says. "Plus it's more secure with Google's new two-factor authentication which I highly recommend."

1. Facebook

More than any other app on any device, the one Scoble taps the most is Facebook. He cites the service's massive user base, which encompasses friends, family and just about everyone in the tech industry. 

"It's - by far - the best social network for keeping lists of people and watching both their private and professional lives and interacting with them," Scoble says. 

If there was one service you'd have to pry from his cold, dead hands, it's Facebook. 

Lead photo courtesy of Robert Scoble. 

Microsoft flacks have been briefing reporters under embargo today. (I wasn't on the list.) The news will break at 11 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday night.

The gist of the scare campaign is that Google is a scary, scary company that reads your private emails in order to send you targeted ads. Even if you don't use Gmail, if you send email to someone who does, Google goes through those emails to generate advertising revenue too," Microsoft warns in material sent to reporters. Oh, and Microsoft points out that six class-action lawsuits have been filed against Google over this issue, and asks people to sign a petition "to tell Google to stop going through your personal email messages."

This is basically an ad campaign for Outlook.com, Microsoft's new mail service. Microsoft points out that Outlook.com doesn't go through the contents of your email. (Though it's worth pointing out that Outlook.com does have advertising.)

Nothing Better To Do?

Microsoft has tried this before. Just about a year ago, the Borg launched a campaign about the "Gmail Man," featuring a video of a mailman who reads everybody's private mail:

More recently, Microsoft introduced its "Scroogled" campaign claiming that Google's search results were skewed by advertising and even created a site, Scroogled.com, to make its case.

(See also Scroogled? Microsoft Charges Google With Manipulating Search Results.)

These are all part of an ever-more-nutso obsession that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has developed with Google over the past 10 years. As I reported recently, Microsoft has spent millions of dollars lobbying regulators in the U.S. and Europe hoping to land Google in trouble, though so far it hasn't worked.

The Hand Of Mark Penn?

The recent smear campaigns appear to be the work of political pollster Mark Penn, who ran Hillary Clinton's disastrous 2008 presidential campaign and signed on with Microsoft to bring negative political tactics to the world of tech. 

The strategy seems to be to keep hammering away on Gmail, hoping that if Microsoft just keeps repeating the same message over and over - that Google is a scary Big Brother spying on everything you do - it will finally sink in and scare people away.

That kind of stuff sometimes works in politics. Whether it will work in tech remains to be seen. So far, however, it's falling short.

Gmail has surged to 425 million users, and now has leapt ahead of Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Of most concern to Microsoft must be that Gmail has been catching on inside universities and corporations. (ReadWrite and our parent company, Say Media, rely on Gmail.) 

A Microsoft spokesman confirmed that the campaign was launching tonight.

In a statement, Google said, "Advertising keeps Google and many of the websites and services Google offers free of charge. We work hard to make sure that ads are safe, unobtrusive and relevant. No humans read your email or Google Account information in order to show you advertisements or related information. An automated algorithm - similar to that used for features like Priority Inbox or spam filtering - determines which ads are shown."

As I pointed out in my recent article, the risk of what Microsoft is doing is that it could backfire and make Microsoft look nasty and desperate. Instead of whining and running smear campaigns, why not just make better products? Why not just kick Google's ass in the marketplace?

The problem with campaigns like this is that it looks like Microsoft considered that option, realized it was impossible, and went with the negative ads instead.

Images by ReadWrite.

We're halfway through January and many people are very much still in how-can-I-improve-my-life mode. If joining the gym or deactivating Facebook hasn't made you feel like a better human yet, here's another idea: The Digital Purge. 

It's been four years since Nicholas Carr wrote his famous story in The Atlantic about whether Google (and by extension, the Internet) is making us "stupid." That article, along with his book The Shallows kicked off a huge debate about the effects the Web is having on our brains, particularly our ability to think deeply or retain information. Since then, with the rise of smartphones, our attention has become even more fractured. The flood of information has become even more constant and overwhelming - and it affects more and more people all the time. 

Fortunately, there are ways to minimize the noise. One thing that would help many people is a periodic purge of all their feeds, subscriptions, emails, notifications and yes, even friends. Not every button will be painless to click. But your brain will feel better for it. And email is the perfect place to start. 

How To Take Control Of Your Inbox 

Even if you've been fairly organized about email - setting up folders or tags, utilizing stars and color-coding - chances are your inbox has outgrown your best efforts to tame it. 

If you're like me, you look at your inbox with one agenda in mind: process it. See if you have any new emails, read them, respond to the ones you starred earlier, draft new messages. Seldom do we take a step back and think about what our inbox looks like and why. 

So many apps, social networks and commerce sites make the same ballsy, if not outright obnoxious assumption: If you're signing up to use this product, you want us to email you all the time. And even if you don't, we'll keep that box checked by default and hope you won't notice. You want push notifications on your phone? Just click "OK." Trust us. 

Screw all of that.  

Plenty of sites and services that are no doubht bombarding your inbox right now. They need to be zapped. Is Facebook telling you every time somebody likes your vacation photos? Does Twitter fill you in every time anyone does anything anywhere near one of your tweets? Don't you constantly check these services anyway? Wait, a random high school acquaintance joined Pinterest?? I wonder what kind of cupcakes they're pinning. 

You don't need those emails. In 15 minutes you can go through and unsubscribe to most of them, zapping anything that doesn't lend itself to a more productive or fulfilling life. For some, you'll need to navigate the original website's notifications settings (try not to get distracted by Grumpy Cat on the way). For others, the "unsubscribe" link is right there at the bottom of the newsletter, as required by law. Many times, it actually works properly, too!

When It Doubt, Go Nuclear With Filters

To nuke the rest, set up a series of rules (this works differently depending on your email provider). In Gmail, it's easy. When you're viewing an offending message, you can click the "More" button in the upper right and then select "Filter messages like these." From there, you can tell Gmail to archive, mark as unread or delete any message with a given sender or subject line. Likewise, if there are any messages you definitely don't want to miss, you can set up a filter that will automatically star them. 

Limit Your Exposure To Email 

But here's the real issue: If you're habitually checking your email dozens of times per day, stop it.  For most of us, the amount of attention we pay our inboxes each day vastly outweighs the value we realistically derive from it. 

Ironically, not checking your email it requires conscious effort, since we've trained our brains to expect a never-ending flow of messages, one of which just might be that super-important opportunity we've been waiting for. 

Our brains need to be re-trained. To do this, we need to turn off the god forsaken email notifications and set aside specific chunks of time for dealing with email. Of course, productivity gurus have been telling us this for years. But it's worthless advice unless we actually do it.

But here's the key. It's not enough to re-train ourselves. While we're at it, we need to re-train those with whom we communicate via email so they no longer expect immediate responses to every message. Surprisingly, a growing number of employers are actually encouraging this practice, especially after hours. (See Why I'm Joining The Movement To Stop Answering After-Hours Email.) 

They know that constant email interruptions aren't good for productivity. We need to learn that lesson as well.

Lead photo by Liz West. 

For example, Google just announced it has created a version of Gmail in the Cherokee language. 

There are fewer than 20,000 Cherokee speakers in the world, and perhaps only 100 or so people who speak nothing but this language. So why would Google put a bunch of engineers and linguists to work for months making an email program in Cherokee?

It began when Craig Cornelius, a Google engineer, shared a ride with a Vince Blackfox, member of the Cherokee nation. They got talking about the effort to preserve Native American languages, many of which have been dying out as fewer and fewer people speak them. A 2002 survey showed that nobody under the age of 40 spoke conversational Cherokee.

Cornelius worked with the language technology department at Cherokee Nation to figure out Cherokee words for things like "inbox" and "spam."

The project was tricky because Cherokee uses a unique alphabet (above) created in 1821 by a Cherokee silversmith named Sequoyah (aka George Gist or George Guess). The Cherokee Nation is hoping that the Gmail in Cherokee project will breathe new life into the Cherokee language by giving young people an opportunity to use the language in their day-to-day lives.

I hope I don't sound hopelessly naive, but is there any other company in the tech industry (or any industry for that matter) that would ever do something this awesome?  

Image courtesy of Google.