Microsoft's Windows Phone team reignited its #droidrage Twitter stunt this week, a campaign that offers free Windows Phones to Android malware victims. After originally creating it almost a year ago, Microsoft has remained relatively quiet in its anti-Android quest. Earlier this week, the official Windows Phone Twitter account kicked off #droidrage again in a series of Tweets including "wait for your Android phone to get infected with malware" and "buy a Windows Phone and connect with people you care about instead of some hacker plotting in a dank basement."
The account has been sharing stories from other Twitter users who appear to have encountered Android malware. Google removed 27 malware-infected apps from its Play Store last year, a move that prompted Microsoft to start its campaign, but despite an upward trend in Android malware, there's no evidence to suggest it's as bad as Microsoft makes out. Google is also making changes to Android 4.2 to include a malware scanner that analyzes "sideloaded" apps for malware threats. With no recent high profile Android malware stories, Microsoft kicked off #droidrage again, seemingly out of the blue, and it has backfired.
Twitter users have created a #windowsrage hash tag that is full of users upset by Microsoft's latest marketing misstep. The company's fascination with being anti-Google reached its peak recently after the Bing division launched its "scroogled" campaign to directly attack Google's "unfair pay-to-rank shopping practices." It's the latest in a host of anti-Google attacks from Microsoft ranging from the Gmail man to newspaper ads bashing Google's privacy changes. It's clear from the #droidrage effort that end users don't always take to these in your face marketing campaigns. Perhaps the Windows Phone team will now focus on the challenges it has with its own product before trying to take down the most widely used mobile operating system.
