Microsoft Pulls An Embarrassing Blog Post Making Fun Of Google Apps

ScreenshotAn image from the now-canceled "Scroogled" anti-Google TV ad campaign.

On Tuesday, a Microsoft senior product manager for Office 365 wrote a blog post with the title "Google Apps Brings Families Together."

It was bizarre. In it, the manager talked about his "Knucklehead Son" who wanted to "wander around the country in a Volkswagen camper van" and compared that son to Google.

The post also said he was worried about his son fulfilling his foreign language requirement to graduate from high school, then noted that he was taking sign language "because it's easy."

That was also supposed to be a slam on Google Apps, which Google touts as being easy to use. 

On Wednesday morning, Microsoft took the blog post down. (The cached version is still available via Google search.)

Microsoft told us, "The blog post was not properly vetted and has been removed. It was not a reflection of Microsoft views nor in keeping with the tone of how we communicate with our customers."

The whole thing read like a product of the old Microsoft that used to do things like the Scroogled ad campaign, in which it made fun of Google for violating its users' privacy by doing things like scanning their emails to sell ads. 

But shortly after new CEO Satya Nadella took over in February, Microsoft canceled the Scroogled TV ads, and the old Scroogled website now goes to a much more tasteful page advertising the positive benefits of using Microsoft products. It's no longer selling Scroogled gear through the Microsoft Store, either, and a note says that all profits from sales of those products were donated to charity.

The fact that a manager posted such a weird slam against Google shows that the old Microsoft still lives on in pockets of the company.

But the fact that Microsoft realized its mistake and took it down so quickly reflects pretty well on the new Microsoft.