Valleywag said yesterday that Microsoft is set to make the announcement today:
Microsoft’s version of the story: Redmond had always planned to drop Seinfeld. The awkward reality: The ads only reminded us how out of touch with consumers Microsoft is — and that Bill Gates’s company has millions of dollars to waste on hiring a has-been funnyman to keep him company.
A PR person quoted says there is the “potential to do other things” with Seinfeld. Hardly anyone liked the ads. Still, Techdirt’s Michael Masnick argues:
Even if some people didn’t get the ads, people were talking about them. Caving, rather than going through with the rest of the planned ads and laying out the message that they had planned to lay out, just makes the company look foolish. The first two ad segments clearly set the framework for numerous commercials that Microsoft could use to both humanize itself and inform people about what Microsoft was doing — and now it’s basically a dead end. Yes, there were some very vocal critics of the ads, but bowing to their pressure sends exactly the wrong message.
CNet has the story too.