Ads in Gmail displayed as normal emails?

https://twitter.com/gulliantonio/status/357975467598422016

by ot • 13 years ago

358 261 13 years ago

Yes, I saw this, but seems to be limited to the Promotions filtered tab which, well, an advert next to an advert. I'm kind of okay with that. But it does make you wonder if this is the start of a slippery slope.

andybak• 13 years ago

Some would argue it's the second step on a slippery slope (yay for mixed metaphors!) - the first step being ads in an email client. At least the rate of descent is so far moderately glacial.

psbp3• 13 years ago

Ads in an email client that is explicitly supported by ads? The horror.

asfasfafwF• 13 years ago

I think this is a slippery slope. They are essentially unsolicited mail that you never asked for. Some people will genuinely use the promotions tab to receive email from companies for which they have requested promotions be sent to them. Google is getting a free ride without permission.

derefr2• 13 years ago

It sort of makes sense to me that Google, in exchange for giving me a free email account, would email ads to my free email account. Microsoft always has; I can't tell you how many times I saw "Hotmail (1)" on my MSN screen and clicked through only to find it was some ad for some Microsoft thing or another. At least with Google's version, it's very, very clear that these are ads; they don't even make your inbox get a (1) next to it or anything.

thezilch• 13 years ago

A free ride, running one of the largest and best-of-breed, free software-infrastructures.

tokenizerrr• 13 years ago

What makes you feel like they need any kind of permission? It's their product and they can damn well structure it how they want to.

You may not like it, and if you don't I strongly urge you to stop using their products.

Colliwinks• 13 years ago

Exactly: "Promotions" is not "Spam". There is already a spam folder, so these should go straight in there, if anywhere.

How does this fit in with the CAN-SPAM act?

"Unsubscribe compliance

    A visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism is present in all emails.
    Consumer opt-out requests are honored within 10 days.
    Opt-out lists also known as Suppression lists are only used for compliance purposes.

If there is no unsubscribe option, are google in violation? (Their get-out may be that these are not actual emails, but by making the transition from clear ad space to inbox, most people would argue that the delivery mechanism is irrelevant)

smegel• 13 years ago

Sort of makes sense...otherwise goggle is basically providing a space for others to advertise to you inside their application, which makes little business sense.

makomk• 13 years ago

No. Otherwise Google is providing a space for you to receive ads from others, which makes the same kind of business sense that offering an e-mail service in the first place does.

workbench4• 13 years ago

Of course it is, look at YouTube it's practically unwatchable now without ad blockers.

Ads in your search results, ads to the left of your video, ads before the video, ads during the video

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

If this becomes a thing, I might actually switch to something else.

sitharus• 13 years ago

I've been actively looking for alternatives recently after all their "improvements" kept breaking my flow.

Unfortunately there isn't much out there :/

pjmlp2• 13 years ago

I have been using my own email server since 2000.

For me, Gmail is only an email aggregator for my multiple email accounts. At home I keep on using a trusty desktop IMAP client.

da_n• 13 years ago

Have you tried Fastmail?

minikites3• 13 years ago

Fastmail is pretty great.

maqr• 13 years ago

I'm actually fine using IMAP, but I really don't want to run my own dovecot/exim/spamassassin servers. It's really inconvenient and really hard to filter out spam. What I need is a hosted IMAP/SMTP service that does spam filtering. I'd prefer not to stay on gmail and use their imap/smtp, but that might be the short term solution.

bbrks2• 13 years ago

Likewise, I've been thinking about moving away from Google Apps for a while and this may be the push that I needed.

Anybody have any suggestions? Self-hosted or otherwise.

JonnieCache2• 13 years ago

http://www.roundcube.net/ is generally agreed to be the best webmail system. It's OSS.

modernerd• 13 years ago

I've been happy with http://atmailcloud.com/ It's $10/month for 5 email accounts, multi-domain support, with calendaring and contacts too.

Email aliases don't count against the 5 account limit, and you can have as many as you like on whatever domains you like. Adding a domain doesn't use up an account slot, so you can set up forwarding addresses for multiple domains for no extra cost.

nawitus• 13 years ago

Yeah, I'll definately start searching for a good alternative. This is just unacceptable.

AndrewDucker4• 13 years ago

I'd love for Google to work out how much money they make from me in a year, and then to offer to go ad-free for 50% more than that.

At least then I could make an informed decision.

igul2222• 13 years ago

The problem is if Google were to do that, the value of their ads would plummet since the kind of people who would pay to opt out of ads are the same people who would be most likely to pay for things in ads.

Not 100% sure but I think this is is the same reason TV companies don't want to offer their content for streaming online, and Hulu can't remove ads for its premium users.

davidw• 13 years ago

Maybe. I sometimes don't even notice there are ads there because I ignore them so completely. I think you'd have to study the matter further.

bulatb• 13 years ago

Why are people who hate ads more likely to be influenced by them?

tomp• 13 years ago

I'd say it's exactly the reverse. The people who are most bothered by ads are the people to whom the ads provide the lowest value, and are thus the least likely to click them. For example, me.

kolinko• 13 years ago

Wow, never thought of it this way..

dalore2• 13 years ago

By offering to pay you've identified as someone who pays for things making you more valuable to google, thereby increasing what you should pay to Google if you want to go ad free. Then google could offer a bidding war to advertisers to pay more than what your paying to get ads back. Then you have to pay more than that. Until an equilibrium is reached.

losvedir• 13 years ago

Presumably Google would consider that when calculating the OP's comment of "how much money they make from me".

ksk• 13 years ago

Or even better, just sell their email software system so people can purchase it and install it on whichever server they want.

pilif2• 13 years ago

Just sign up for paid google apps. No ads there what so ever. It's $50 per year.

AndrewDucker4• 13 years ago

$50 per year per person.

As I run a Google Apps domain for my family, that would be several hundred dollars per year.

sksksk• 13 years ago

The risk is that it becomes too popular causing google's ad inventory to plummet.

belorn• 13 years ago

If they ever did, they would have to admit that the "free" service is actually just an sale where the user pays for the service with data and ad-watching. Doing that, it would both be bad PR, and would catch the rage of tax officers as only "free" services are tax-free when given to customers.

maxer• 13 years ago

i have been waiting for this on youtube for years- i do not want to see the same video pre-roll i have already clicked skip on 30 or 40 times.

Being a technology company who are seen as leaders in personalised adverts you think they would over come this terrible user experience

workbench4• 13 years ago

The "terrible user experience" which adds numbers to their impressions statistic each time you encounter it?

aestra2• 13 years ago

Adblock Plus blocks those YouTube ads, it skips over them seamlessly, so you aren't aware they are there.

georgebarnett• 13 years ago

Google as an organisation is primarily setup for bucketing users into groups for ads. It's a core assumption thats part of everything they do. Therefor, it's not about how much money they make from you but rather that it's really hard for them organisationally to separate users who want to pay to opt out from the rest who are their product.

The cost there isn't what they make from you in ads, even if you're willing to pay double - it's the effort for them to switch their engineering to making money off two types of users - those pay not to be tracked and those who don't care.

Tyrannosaurs4• 13 years ago

If the internet has taught us anything (other than that there are many people with way too much free time) it's that a vast majority of people would rather not pay for stuff and as a result the number of people willing to pay will be so small that it's not really worth their while.

Outlook.com does have this option for $20 a year - would be interesting to know what the uptake is.

ganeumann• 13 years ago

Google has $31 billion of advertising revenue on their own sites (says their 2012 annual report.) They have about 1 billion unique users per month (from Comscore.) So they have about $31 per user per year of ad revenue on their own sites.

My guess is that most of this is search. Although it may be possible to figure out how much revenue per user Gmail makes, my guess is that it is between $10 and $15 per year.

I think FastMail is significantly cheaper ($5/yr for a personal account, says their website at https://www.fastmail.fm).

math0ne• 13 years ago

Based on the little I know about this I would guess the $ amount would be more than most would be comfortable with.

thejosh• 13 years ago

Who would have that that a major change would be used to provide advertisements from the biggest online advertising company?

NirDremer• 13 years ago

I've tried outlook.com and it was OK. I wonder if this can help make hotmail relevant again.

lostlogin4• 13 years ago

I like some elements of iCloud for email, however its lack of settings (want to have your outgoing mail appear to come from john@doe.com? Tough) and terrible terrible search are a bit of deal breaker. How is the search so bad? I usually resort to just scrolling back through emails rather than use it.

Aqua_Geek• 13 years ago

Seriously. I usually end up grabbing my iPhone and doing a search there instead of via the web interface. So, so bad.

josteink5• 13 years ago

I've tried outlook.com and it was OK. I wonder if this can help make hotmail relevant again.

Not without IMAP it can't. I can't believe Microsoft is dragging their feet on this.

Tyrannosaurs4• 13 years ago

So to all intents and purposes this is targeted, Google endorsed spam delivered directly to my inbox?

If that's the case then it could be time to start looking for a replacement for the last Google product I use.

icebraining3• 13 years ago

It's in the "Promotions" tab, not the primary inbox. Personally, I think there are better reasons to leave Gmail (which is why I did so years ago).

Tyrannosaurs4• 13 years ago

So if I've got rid of that (generally I have fewer than half a dozen e-mails in my inbox so tabs were pretty pointless for me) where do they appear? My assumption was in the regular inbox.

StavrosK• 13 years ago

What's a good email provider? I have tens of domains I want to consolidate into a single inbox (and maybe send valid mail from), and Google Apps hasn't been doing a great job with that until now.

Dylan16807• 13 years ago

Inbox is inbox.

kaeluka• 13 years ago

ok, now I'm officially on the market for alternatives.

Maybe I should go back to good old mutt..

fuzzix• 13 years ago

fetchmail/getmail your gmail, read with mutt, send with msmtp.

pjmlp2• 13 years ago

Pine! :)

OoTheNigerian2• 13 years ago

So this is why they wanted to "help us" sort out our inbox? I feel defrauded into believing their motivation.

Like suddenly realizing I was given a lift solely because my presence in the car allowed the driver to enter my estate or place of work.

This is wrong.

lloeki• 13 years ago

they wanted to "help us" sort out our inbox?

As long as it stays in "promotions" tab, I could care less, as this is where they belong. If that's the case that's actually a smart move to introduce in-maillist ads without polluting the "real" inbox.

As soon as they flow out of that bucket, we're entering Twitter's dickbar levels of dorkiness.

sillysaurus• 13 years ago

One step further: If I'm in the "promotions" tab, then I'm actively looking for deals. So if Google can come up with promotions that interest me, then I'll welcome this new change.

It's not like they're spamming our other inboxes. It's just the promotions inbox.

ry0ohki2• 13 years ago

I still have to keep all of my inboxes at zero. Every inbox must still be checked in case there is something mis-directed. I go out of my way to unsubscribe from most promotions, so no, even in the promotions box this is not welcome for me.

davidgerard• 13 years ago

The trouble is they shove a pile of your real mail in there too, unless you go to disable the tab.

workbench4• 13 years ago

Uses free product from a company thats only profit comes from advertisements and selling user data

and yet you're surprised and upset when they use that free product to show you ads… please don't tell me you actually fell for that "Don't be evil" BS

abenga• 13 years ago

What's "evil" about following the exact same business model that you've been following all along? It's not like they sneaked this up on us. It is public knowledge what they do for revenue. They provide you with simple ways to migrate your data off the service if you're displeased with it. You can connect to your inbox via IMAP and read your mail without seeing the ads (unless these new ads will be sent to that inbox, in which case even I would think that's going too far).

Is it so hard for people to get that some people actually understand that what Google sells is personalized ads based on what they know about us, and actually consider it a fair trade for the services we receive in return? Not everyone is ignorant about this. We just don't care.

Kurts• 13 years ago

Twitter ads look like tweets, Facebook ads look like Facebook posts, and of course search ads look like search results, at least in Gmail they have their own designated area.

They replace the webclip ads when the "promotions" tab is enabled: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/06/ads-in-gmails-promo...

mmahemoff• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising

zwily• 13 years ago

So far, Google hasn't shown ads in search results that look like other search results though. This seems like a shift for them.

harrytuttle2• 13 years ago

Did you pay for it?

No.

Quit complaining, pay for it (Google Apps), or move on.

ohwp• 13 years ago

Agreed. I think it's a little naive to think that a free service doesn't have to make money.

But! Without users Google won't have a business at all. So they should be careful with disruptive advertisement.

anExcitedBeast• 13 years ago

I don't think I buy this idea, and I don't think most honest developers would either. People want to know when their users aren't happy with their service, and they especially want to know if they're feeling alienated.

csomar• 13 years ago

There is a difference between a service monetized by Ads, and a service which tries to trick you into clicking on Ads.

fauigerzigerk2• 13 years ago

I'm letting them occupy a piece of my screen real estate and grab a share of my personal attention every day. I consider that a form of payment.

Now they're coming up with this massive price hike, putting us in a position to choose between accepting a higher price and spending a lot of time moving our data elsewhere. Many people don't even know how to move existing email to a different provider.

So this is definitely something we can legitimately complain about.

tsieling• 13 years ago

So if something doesn't cost you money, you have no business complaining about something you don't like? Weird logic. If someone offers something under any terms, it seems ok to me to say what I think of it. Your position seems to be that if it's free, it's illegitimate to comment on it.

ChuckMcM4• 13 years ago

"This is wrong."

If you read their earnings release from yesterday[1], you will see this gem "Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, decreased approximately 6% over the second quarter of 2012 and decreased approximately 2% over the first quarter of 2013." If you aren't careful you might think that is a "good thing" Gee it cost them 6% less to get a click? No, that isn't the definition you should use [2] the price they got per click went down. So when you get less per click, well you make it up in volume (which they did with a 23% increase in paid clicks).

What that means in simple terms is that the business unit that makes about 10x the revenue of all other Google businesses combined, is showing weakness. And Google is responding as they must, by increasing the opportunity you have to click on ads, as the price per click is a market thing (there are others who are offering ad channels).

This is the fundamental around all of the changes Google is putting in place in their properties (keeping you on their SERP, making everything G+, wrapping your experience in IOS around their applications).

I don't think the changes you are seeing are "wrong", I think they are inevitable.

[1] http://investor.google.com/earnings/2013/Q2_google_earnings....

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_click

so_whaaaat• 13 years ago

Who fucking cares. Google sucks now. Gmail sucks now. I am aborting all Gmail related accounts post-haste.

I may as well be using AOL. Those stupid tabs, and retarded categories are bullshit. The exact kind of noisy, cluttered, shitty interface I'd expect from any other e-mail service.

Fuck them in the ear.

baby2• 13 years ago

might be inevitable for Google. Might not be for another clever service provider, or might not be for a paying-solution.

Either way, Gmail is going down with things like that. Internet is one space where people can choose not to have ads, and nobody likes ads.

underdown• 13 years ago

is it possible their cpc went down because they've overwhored themselves and not the other way around? I seem to recall a shit ton of changes to SERPs preceding and during the periods mentioned.

tnkd2• 13 years ago

Registered specifically to post this.

Today seems to be an interesting day on HN.

First, Google's ad revenue's are down ~5%, every jumps up and down saying the end is near and they need to shape up before they fade into irrelevance.

Now a hint of a forthcoming feature where they are doing just that, making a change to increase revenue and people lose their minds.

Lets think about this. The feature is under Promotions, a section already laden with junk for most people. Are we all saying that John from "matresses online" can send me news about this weeks greatest sleep position and special offers like 5% off pillow fluffing, but Google couldn't input it's own ad, which would likely be tailored to your interests in any case? If you signup to promotions for numerous sources (enough to warrant the promotions tab) you might appreciate the ad, no? If you don't, well you'll never be in the Promoted tab in most cases anyway, so it likely wont affect you all that much (assuming they wouldn't inject ad's into main inbox stream).

tnkd2• 13 years ago

Side note, for reference I'm a Google apps user with ads disabled for my domain, who doesn't use this new inbox style, so I'd assume the ads wouldn't display for me in any case.

scholia3• 13 years ago

The feature is under Promotions, a section already laden with junk for most people

In my case, as a journalist, it includes a huge amount of useful email. Either way, I'd have to check it often, because Gmail's sorting into categories is abysmal. (For the same reason I have to check the spam folder multiple times a day. It contains a high proportion of legitimate email.)

However, it's a moot point because I turned the tabs off within a day.

aestra2• 13 years ago

The feature is under Promotions, a section already laden with junk for most people.

I don't know... I don't know how Google decides mail goes into the Promotions tab, but I have no junk in there. The things that went into my Promotions tab were:

-My auto insurance policy

-A notice from my vet saying my cats were due for vaccinations.

-Some (but not all) emails from my college's Alumni association (which probably would be considered promotional)

-Emails telling me my phone bill was due.

-Email confirming a car rental.

-Emails telling me that my auto loan payment was due.

-Email from Walgreens telling me that I have a prescription that was due for refill, and to reply to that email to automatically refill that prescription.

-Some emails that sites send after you create an account with them.

All these are important for me, but I wouldn't consider any of them promotional material. I don't sign up for promotions.

I went and disabled these silly tabs...

arkem• 13 years ago

Google's advertising revenues are not down 5%. Google's total revenue is up 19% year over year and 1% quarter over quarter. All categories of revenue are up except for network revenue (which is up 7% Y/Y but down 2% Q/Q).

You may be thinking of the share price which in after hours trading dropped 5% but recovered most of that this morning. Or perhaps you're thinking about the Cost-Per-Click metric which decreased somewhere around 5%.

http://investor.google.com/pdf/2013Q2_google_earnings_slides...

dendory• 13 years ago

Email used to be fun, then spammers came, then good email providers added spam filters and made email fun again, now email providers are sending us spam. The circle is almost complete.

agilebyte2• 13 years ago

I, on the other hand, am happy. It is the same thing as the NSA working as my email backup provider.

Changes like these give growth to new/alternative businesses.

rabino• 13 years ago

Changes like these give growth to new/alternative businesses.

I totally dig this perspective. From now on, my opinion is that Google makes this changes to promote entrepreneurship. Love it.

buro9• 13 years ago

NSA working as my email backup provider

Backups are only useful if you are able to restore from them.

fauigerzigerk2• 13 years ago

As long as Gmail's spam filter catches Google's own spam as well everything is fine ;-)

jaredmcateer• 13 years ago

I've trained Gmail to put my G+ Instant Upload Share notification into the spam box. It has a link on the email to manage subscriptions, I turned off every god damn email option in G+ yet I still get "You have X photos to share". I maybe shared 1% of the photos I take, like picasa before it I use G+ as a cloud back up of my photos.

Furzel• 13 years ago

Really looking forward to see fun spam closing the loop

weland• 13 years ago

now email providers are sending us spam

Mine isn't.

Get used to it: if you aren't paying for the service, you're not their client and they are not your provider. You're their product.

It's not pretty, but sadly this is how life tends to work :-).

rfnslyr2• 13 years ago

What do you use? Better yet, what's an alternative to Google Apps I can use for my domain?

tiziano883• 13 years ago

Sadly? Just because there are free options, it does not mean you have to use them. Personally, I'm quite happy that it works like that, it does not bother me in the slightest, and I get a good service in change. I realise this might not be ideal for everyone though.

netc• 13 years ago

So I pay for Cable and I still have to watch endless commercials. Paying for something doesn't guarantee anything.

glesica• 13 years ago

I suggest Fastmail. I switched a few months back and haven't missed GMail yet. YMMV, but you owe it to yourself to give it a look.

toble• 13 years ago

Wouldn't it be anti-competitive to block spam, yet let your own spam through? The ads in that screenshot look like they are effectively imitating spam.

Joeboy2• 13 years ago

There needs to be a docker.io image with a (mostly) preconfigured mailserver, roundcube and PGP. Maybe it exists already? If not I might make one.

Nux2• 13 years ago

Given that this is avoidable by using any POP or IMAP client, I wonder how soon they'll close them down. I'm pretty sure it's a matter of "when".

rquirk• 13 years ago

The basic HTML interface doesn't show this either, or at least I don't have this tab and that's what I use. Nor does the really basic old mobile interface (which works great from the terminal with w3m) -- this one https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=mobile

You're right of course, all of these will probably disappear soon :(

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

I think it's a good benchmark of their real intentions whether they interfere with those at all. At the moment, because any user can bail out to an IMAP or POP client, including 3rd party web services that behave as those, there is a natural limit to how obnoxious Google can be. If they degrade their native web inbox sufficiently, people will switch to alternatives in droves (I already have long ago).

Nux2• 13 years ago

Indeed, we'll know their real intentions once they interfere with those services, however a bad precedent has already been created: their jabber/xmpp service.

Anyone with Android phones, what's the default way to check your emails, IMAP? If yes, then there is still some hope. :-)

supercoder• 13 years ago

I wonder, will this be how they start to push ads into IMAP clients ?

dalore2• 13 years ago

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a little bit and say that the email-like-ads are in your promotions tab. A tab that is meant for ads. I turned off the tabs and I don't get the email ads.

nikbackm• 13 years ago

No problem for me, I just turned the feature off.

But maybe it will become mandatory in due time?

wjk• 13 years ago

The tabs are nice and all. But is there a way to have both the tabs and a button so i can see all emails at once in 1 tab? Been clicking around with no success.

scholia3• 13 years ago

Same here. I can't see any way to see all mail either, apart from turning off the tabs. Which I did.

The tabs were pretty much useless anyway, because the sorting is so bad. I have one important category of mail that's already tagged with a label, and Gmail had examples under three different tabs. That's so incompetent it's almost malign.

mortehu3• 13 years ago

Create a quick label for the search "+label:inbox"?

6ren2• 13 years ago

Cue: If you're not the customer, you're the product.

For balance: linux and open source in general.

tiziano883• 13 years ago

What do linux and open source have to do with this at all?

6ren2• 13 years ago

They are a counter-example: you are not the customer (you aren't paying for it), but you also are not the product.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

While Im not sure my Karma would withstand a defense of this, if one must have adverts, isn't sliding them in to the email list a better use of screen real estate, compared to big blocks of in your face adverts? Assuming these advmails are clearly marked as such.

I dont like it, and I'm not really a gmail user (I have an account as a sort of throw away),but this does seem better than yahoo's big blocks of ads. Although, I do block those.

On the other hand, is this not just way that gmail can defeat traditional ad-blocking? Easier to block some nasty flash ad than it is to filter email?

tjoff• 13 years ago

They take up more conscious space. You have to parse them more carefully if they are right in the middle of the content that you actually want. Those big blocks of in your face adverts don't require any attention at all and they it's trivial to use your brains inbuilt adblock to filter them out.

So, if one must have adverts, the usual form factor is vastly preferred. Especially if the alternative is trying to masquerade spam as legit content.

workbench4• 13 years ago

Feeling pretty smug about never jumping on the gmail bandwagon right now

psbp3• 13 years ago

I'm still feeling pretty good about jumping on.

mseebach• 13 years ago

There have always been ads in GMail, and they have always been clearly marked as ads. These new ads are still clearly marked as ads, and clearly distinct from emails, they are just placed slightly differently in the UI.

skc• 13 years ago

Horace Dediu's (asymco) graph of Googles rapidly declining margins probably illustrates why Google is now resorting to this sort of thing.

http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Screen-Shot...

And related post.

http://www.asymco.com/2013/07/19/whats-an-android-user-worth...

notintokyo• 13 years ago

Anyone have an idea what is happening to their margins by the way? Who is competing against the same ad dollars as Google (FB seems a bit different), if cost per click is going down, why?

Bognar• 13 years ago

The explanation I'd heard was that more people are using mobile devices and ads are less effective there.

Spooky233• 13 years ago

I think they are like any other big industrial company.

They build out factories (datacenters, networks, etc) based on a projection of long-term growth. Once you start missing those growth targets, it's like compounded interest... the impact of a small miss in year 1 has a big impact on the year 5 bottom line.

They have a few issues IMO:

- The market is saturated... how many more tiny classified ads can you sell?

- The "less sophisticated" users who click on ads use Bing -- the Windows default.

- There are real competitors out there... Bing, Facebook, etc.

- They piss off their hardcore users too much. Google+: enough said.

awj2• 13 years ago

I would guess it's mobile/tablets. I rarely see tasteful advertising geared towards that space, and "regular" pages shown on a mobile phone force me to zoom in on content and scroll past ads.

plg• 13 years ago

I wonder at what point the ads appear to have come from one of your legitimate contacts.

PS isn't faceboob already doing this?

jstalin• 13 years ago

Having used Adblock (currently Adblock Edge) and Ghostery/Disconnect for so long, I haven't seen ads in ages. It's actually a bit jarring when I use a computer that doesn't have ad blocking enabled... everything suddenly gets so cluttered.

namwen• 13 years ago

Yeah, I've visited websites for years that I felt were very well designed in regards to being open and having a nice amount of whitespace. Seeing the same site on someone else's computer is a bit heartbreaking.

jes5199• 13 years ago

I tried to switch to Adblock Edge, but it seems to be buggier than Adblock Plus - like, the extension config screen doesn't seem to work

hafichuk• 13 years ago

So they kill Reader and "socialize" email. What's next google, and what are you going to do to keep us techies folded in?

cwdutch• 13 years ago

Isn't this old news? It's very interesting, because on top of the ad placement, the binning of promotions may radically reduce the efficacy of email-based sales. Fab, Groupon, Grand St., etc, are probably not too happy about this.

markshepard• 13 years ago

I just use the Mail client in my mac. so I dont even see any change so far.

mtgx• 13 years ago

If only this meant they're now more likely to implement PGP in Gmail.

mikegioia• 13 years ago

Web-based PGP is a bad idea from a security standpoint.

Why would you want GMail to handle your PGP encryption, when it's basically known that they hand over email content to the USG? You think your PGP keys would be safe there?

If people want to encrypt their web-mail using a web client they might as well just run the email message through a shift cipher because that's about the upper bound on security you can expect.

moskie2• 13 years ago

Hate to say "I told you so," but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5787363, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5787398

anon1385• 13 years ago

That's hilarious. You would think people would stop giving Google the benefit of the doubt when it comes to anything advertising related, but fanboys seem to feel no embarrassment at being proven wrong time and time again. Choice quotes:

No. It files all your emails that it classifies as promotional but non-spam. That won't include Google Offers and Zagat if you're not subscribed to Google Offers or Zagat (for me, it's mostly events & careers newsletters). It's just an auto-categoriser (a new UI for smart labels), it doesn't invent new emails that weren't there before.

I think you misunderstand what that tab is for. It's not a place for Google advertising; it's a place where promotional emails from any site are automatically sorted into - to keep them separate from other useful email. E.g. a clothing website that sends emails about weekly sales - that'll end up under Promotional.

the "Promotions" label is applied to your incoming mail that is best classified as a "Promotion", such as any promotional email from sites you shop at - it's not additional content that Gmail is feeding you.

moskie2• 13 years ago

Switch back to Priority Inbox while you can!

(until, of course, they sunset it.)

superuser2• 13 years ago

There is an awful lot of righteous indignation here over Google placing ads where you'll only see them if you're looking for ads.

akadien• 13 years ago

Gmail gets creepier and creepier. I'm not there yet, but I'm close to looking for alternatives.

Filecloud• 13 years ago

It is wrong in so many levels. Couple of years back we were talking google may send you an email advertising cremation services based on your email history. It is becoming a reality. The worrying part is upright, honest googlers are supporting it whole heartedly.

DanielBMarkham• 13 years ago

So no matter how many times I click on the "spam" button on these things, I'm always going to be getting them. Great.

netcan• 13 years ago

I'm surprised ads is what gets people up in arms.

Google knowitall overlords logging your whole digital and physical life. Media bubble. Emails shared with spooks.

Ads are annoying. I get that. This is less annoying than youtube ads. Less annoying than TV ads (even if you can fastforward them). Anyway, annoying is not the same as evil. Gmail is convenient. Ads are annoying. If (annoying > convenient), use something else.

ing33k• 13 years ago

was getting this since almost a month..

dm82• 13 years ago

Okay. So this style of advertising is known as "native/integrated advertising". As someone who runs a startup doing the same, I have few things:

1. Google has been doing this for years. It was known as "adwords". It's multi-billion dollars tool that gave birth to SEM.

2. It is limited to promotions tab. Promotions tab is where users go to check their promotional emails. I doubt Gmail will move them to real inbox. In fact, they will be foolish to do so. It's pretty smart move.

3. It is clearly marked as an ad with yellow background. So user is clearly informed about advertisement.

It's understandable that users are freaking out a little. But c'mon gmail has been doing ads in their inbox for a while. Email is extremely personal medium and they will be foolish to move ads from promotions tab to inbox tab. Google has lot of smart folks on their teams so we can trust them for the same.

echohack• 13 years ago

I have a few things too:

1. This new "feature" is basically automated filters. Most folks who've used gmail for years have at least some filters set up. Google didn't say anything about throwing ads in the promotions tab, so this is a little...strange.

2. Slippery slope. How long until this populates the main inbox tab? I bet google could even charge differently depending on which tab you want your ads to show up in.

3. XMPP Federation. Google Reader. Google Wave. How long will it be until Gmail is either axed or full of so many ads that it's unusable?

4. Does Adblock / NoScript block these? Can it?

5. The history of Gmail was that it was a next-generation email service and started as an invite only club. Now, every email provider under the sun gives similar features, and gmail hasn't changed much. Personally I think that this is a good thing, it shows that the service is stable and the ideas were correct. But people at Google might think otherwise and might want to try to "innovate" more. Sooo... ads.

dm82• 13 years ago

1. I agree, Google must do something to inform users about these auto categorizations

2. I doubt they will populate primary inboxes with ads. They created promotions tab for that so they must've thought about it long and hard. Believe me, when people like me who work in ads businesses think about introducing new ads/formats, we worry about lot of things. Ads are not about making money. Ads are about ensuring users find them useful, brands also demand that. Lastly, even if I run ad related business, I'm an average user too, I have my family who have no clue about how digital advertising works. So whatever decisions I make is important for me, my family and my users given it's implications.

3. Google axed some of the products you mentioned cause they were not sustainable for them. I doubt that will be the case for Gmail. It's most popular web-mail service.

4. No they can't as far as my knowledge goes. But someone might figure out a way to block them.

5. I was part of invite only club in 2004. And I also miss some of the cutting-edge innovations that gmail brought e.g. storage, speed, agility etc. I personally find these auto categorizations to be extremely useful. It has cleaned up my cluttered inbox. And ads are also part of it but their impact is minimal.

dannyr3• 13 years ago

Wow. A lot of discussion from a single tweet. Do we have all the information?

It's very likely a test. Google does a lot of testing that ultimately is not publicly released.

dannyr3• 13 years ago

Seriously, it's in the PROMOTIONS tab which you can TURN OFF.

Why the rage here?

bbrks2• 13 years ago

Because the ideal use case would be people seeing promotions they want. Not what google thinks they want.

dokem• 13 years ago

Oh no, a company that gives me everything for free is displaying non intrusive ads in the wrong part of the screen and even tells me that they are ads! I'm too entitled for this!

cenhyperion• 13 years ago

I've been using an email client and slowly migrating to a @mydomain email for personal contacts.

tszming• 13 years ago

It would be more easy for you to switch to other providers if you own your domain - now you know why Google removed the free Google app for custom domain last year...Don't forget the story of XMPP, who know they will not remove pop3/imap access in the future because these standards are not able to catch up the Gmail's upcoming revolutionary features?

After all, all these moves are understandable - they now have nearly 50K employees, shareholders have high expectation on the "growth" and they need to invest on projects like glasses, self driving car and maybe mars exploration! Where does the money come from? I would expect Google will receive less criticism if they simply remove the "Don't be evil" from their company motto - then we can say Microsoft/Yahoo! is doing the same thing, why complain?

dschiptsov• 13 years ago

Well, when users developed a habit of ignoring ads they must push it the other way, like FB did with placing ads in a news feed as stories. The same premise, the same response.

Just think of Promotions tab as a new SPAM folder.)

leke• 13 years ago

After reading this, I really should donate to AdBlockPlus.

antihero• 13 years ago

Is there a good way to sync contacts to my (Android, but possibly soon FirefoxOS) phone with FastMail?

Ads in Gmail displayed as normal emails?

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