Microsoft launches ‘Scroogled’ anti-Google Shopping website

Microsoft is launching its latest anti-Google campaign this week. A new Scroogled site has emerged that directly attacks Google’s “unfair pay-to-rank shopping practices” says Microsoft. “Simply put, all of their shopping results are now paid ads,” reads a statement on the site. The move follows a change by Google to move to a model where all merchants pay either per click or per transaction to be included in Google Shopping.

“We say that when you limit choices and rank them by payment, consumers get Scroogled,” says Microsoft. The Scroogled site offers up a blatant way to use Bing for holiday shopping results, the latest in a string of anti-Google attacks from Microsoft. The software maker launched “Bing it on” recently with a TV campaign to challenge Google’s search results, but the company has also previously attacked Google’s privacy changes with newspaper ads and Gmail man video.

Microsoft’s Bing team is laying down some strong commitments to its approach to shopping results. Among them is a promise to not “switch to pay-to-rank to allow some shopping search results to appear higher than others.” These promises may hold for now, but search and advertising is ever changing and Microsoft acknowledges that it’s working to ensure services and information gets delivered as either search results or ads.