Microsoft is offering t-shirts, hats, a hoodie and a coffee mug bashing their competitor

Last year, Microsoft's marketing department made the questionable decision to go after Google with a "Scroogled" campaign that bashed its competitor on privacy issues. It primarily focused on the way Gmail scans private correspondence to serve up ads, and encouraged people to switch to Outlook which also scans what users have written but only to prevent spam and malicious attacks. (The argument would be much stronger coming from the Dark Mail Alliance, which proposes to encrypt email so that it can only be read by the recipient.) Despite mockery from the tech press and an anemic response from consumers, Microsoft is doubling down on the campaign and offering a line of "Scroogled" products just in time for the holidays. Unfortunately for those interested, the "Keep calm while we steal your data" mug ($7.99) and t-shirt ($11.99) featuring the Chrome logo have already sold out, as has the "I'm watching you" t-shirt ($11.99). And Google's 40,000+ employees may have something to do with their being out of stock. Judging from comments on Google Plus, "Scrooglers" love the merchandise.

This stocking stuffer is already sold out

"LOL!  It's already sold out!  If only the Surface is this popular," wrote one software engineer linking to the mug, leading a colleague to add, "Probably sold out because Googlers bought them all up."

"I'd buy some of these, just for ironic purposes, if it didn't go toward propping up Microsoft," wrote a Google developer, again linking to the mug.

"I desperately want a Scroogled T-Shirt to wear to work, but you have to have a Microsoft Account to buy one," writes one Google systems engineer. "Really, MS? Your store that makes fun of the competition's need to have user information requires a buyer to give you all their information to buy a T-shirt."

John Gruber at Daring Fireball also suggests that the Mountain View crowd is buying the irony: "A few readers report that this 'Scroogled' cack is actually popular with… Google employees."

Others were less impressed with the Scroogle swag. "Seriously? What are they smoking in MS marketing department?"commented one Google cloud engineer.

Meanwhile, one former Google engineer offered his own photoshopped version of the mug. "There, I fixed it for them," he wrote, adding logos for Skype and the Xbox.

Google's official response is a snarky one with this comment to the L.A. Times: "Microsoft's latest venture comes as no surprise; competition in the wearables space really is heating up." In other words, Google's got Glass and Microsoft's got silly t-shirts.

A suggestion for Google from the peanut gallery: run a "Microshafted" campaign.