Microsoft Has Finally Abandoned Its Google-Bashing 'Scroogled' Ad Campaign

MicrosoftMicrosoft once even had a Scroogled merchandise range.

For more than two years Microsoft has been running a negative marketing campaign called "Scroogled," which aimed to point out the faults in its rival Google's policies. Now it looks as though the controversial push has come to an end.

The multi-million dollar multi-year campaign - which had appeared on TV, in newspapers, online and even extended to a merchandise range - mocked everything from Google's Shopping search rankings allegedly being dictated by how much advertisers were willing to pay to boost themselves up the search results page, to a major push claiming Gmail violated users' privacy by scanning emails for key words in order to serve targeted ads.

Unofficial Microsoft blog Winbeta has noticed that the campaign's website, Scroogled.com, is no longer active and redirects to a new URL: WhyMicrosoft.com. The site is aimed at business customers and is far less aggressive than the Scroogled push, but does allow visitors to directly compare Google's products with Microsoft's tools.

The death knell of the Scroogled campaign has been sounding for some time. Mark Penn, the figurehead behind the 2012 Scroogled launch, was promoted by CEO Satya Nadella to become Microsoft's chief strategy officer last year.

And last summer Nadella overhauled the company's strategy, repositioning the brand as the "productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world," which seemingly had no place for the Scroogled push. Indeed, the website has been the last element of the campaign standing: Microsoft has not taken Scroogled into above the line advertising - such as newspaper ads - since 2013, Gigaom notes.

Business Insider has contacted Microsoft for comment. This article will be updated once a response has been received.