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I read Mitch Ratcliffe’s ZDNet takedown of Ms. Dewey, an extremely annoying Flash search engine front end, had a laugh, and thought no more of it. Read the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:
Ms. Dewey is only slightly more pleasant than Scuzz the Rat in Microsoft Bob (who you cannot see here, thanks to Ms. Dewey, who doesn’t do image search and took 14 seconds to display some Bob-related results, because she had a schtick to do).
God, I hate bad UI.
Fair enough. Just some more useless dancing baloney on the Web from a startup with more cash than clues, right? Wrong. David Ewatt at Forbes did some digging and discovered that
The site, put together by San Francisco-based design shop Evolution Bureau, is part of a Microsoft ad campaign, according to the company, although Microsoft is not currently mentioned anywhere on the site.
Well, the “more cash than clues” part was right. It’s the Microsoft viral marketers again, fresh from their “triumphs” with Clearification, Zune rabbit petting, and misleading Origami customers.
Ewatt also follows up with a response from Microsoft:
“Who says search can’t be fun? At Windows Live we are constantly exploring new and creative ways to promote our search offering and deliver relevant information in an interesting and engaging way. The Ms. Dewey website is just one example of these efforts.
This is not an advertising campaign. This really just an experiment for exploring different ways to introduce people to search and Live Search specifically. We are not promoting the site but simply putting it out on the Web for discovery.”
Did I miss a press release where Microsoft announced a program for hiring otherwise unemployable viral marketers?
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October 19th, 2006 at 1:28 AM
Orange, Messenger Sign in, and Ms. Dewey
News from around the Windows Live web: Orange, the France-Telecom brand for its mobile and broadband
October 21st, 2006 at 4:48 PM
[...] Yep, that’s right. Microsoft are responsible for Ms Dewey. Although, you won’t find any mention of them on the site. Microsoft says: “Who says search can’t be fun? At Windows Live we are constantly exploring new and creative ways to promote our search offering and deliver relevant information in an interesting and engaging way. The Ms. Dewey website is just one example of these efforts. [...]
October 25th, 2006 at 3:14 PM
[...] Some blogposts about MsDewey: http://www.pandia.com/sew/298-ms-dewey-presents-a-new-sexy-search-engine.html http://www.hunterstrat.com/news/2006/10/18/ms-dewey-just-tell-me-its-a-joke/ http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/10/19/ms-dewey-puts-the-stupid-in-search/ [...]
December 6th, 2006 at 11:04 AM
[...] More by following the link, but Zune’s clearly a story that will have to play out for better or worse over time. As for Microsoft viral marketing, just chalk up another dud. [...]
December 8th, 2006 at 6:32 PM
[...] Last but not least, here’s a puzzle: Watch the first Vista TV ad and figure out where the hundreds of millions of marketing dollars are going. Well, at least the ad doesn’t have the Ms. Dewey problem. So far. Previous Ms. Dewey fun here. Filed under Security, Legal, General Business, Licensing, Piracy, Marketing, Microsoft, Patch Tuesday [...]