

Gmail now features ads that look like emails - owenwil
http://marketingland.com/new-gmail-inbox-features-ads-that-look-like-emails-above-promotional-email-subscriptions-52318

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conroy
Previous discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6068873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6068873)

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neeee
Why is this at the bottom?

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enraged_camel
Because Google fanboys flag anything anti-Google. It has been happening often
recently: stories that paint Google in a negative light fall off the front
page despite continuing to receive a ton of upvotes and comments.

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lloeki
Title is wrong/linkbait. Not 'your inbox'. Actual title is: "New Gmail Inbox
Features _Ads That Look Like Emails, Above Promotional Email Subscriptions_ "
(emphasis mine).

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hrktb
The previous discussion had this distinction all over the place as well,
but...I've looked at what's in my promotions tab, and a few mailing lists and
some of the shop member mail I subscrided went there by default. 'Promotions'
is set as a split part of my inbox, not some feature coming out of nowhere
with whole new and google only content. Having junk ads in there is the same
as having junk ads in my inbox.

PS: yes I can just get rid of the new tabs and go back to the old layout, and
tha's what I did. I just hink the difference made between the main tab and
promotions tab doesn't seem meaningful in this discussion.

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Shooti
Technically all they did in the tabbed layout was swap the old ads which
hovered over the Inbox message list with embedded ads in the Promotion tab.

So the choice is between "Ads in Inbox list + Ads in message view" VS "Ads in
Promotions tab + Ads in message view". There's no real difference between
tabbed inbox style and the classic inbox styles except presentation if you
think about it.

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comex
Except that presentation is important. An ad that looks like an email is, in a
sense, deceptive, masquerading as something you've valued enough to put in
your inbox (well, at least enough not to bother opting out from...).

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jevinskie
Reminds me of "Download Now" ads that purport to look like the one legit
download link. It turns into a game of "try not to download malware".

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RyanZAG
Luckily it's easy to disable, or I'd be jumping ship now. Just turn off the
tabs and the ads go with them - and the tabs are pretty useless anyway.

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Kiro
The tabs have already improved my Gmail experience tremendously so not sure
why you think they are useless.

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cstross
In my case they're useless because I read email via IMAP -- I only ever visit
the web interface if I don't have access to my laptop or want to flag
something as spam.

More to the point, I do _not_ want some algorithm "helpfully" sorting my
incoming email into different views according to some opaque criteria that I
don't get to define or tweak: I want to see _everything_ in my default inbox,
no exceptions.

Permitting someone else to sort my mail via rules I have not defined is how
important business email gets missed or overlooked.

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Legion
> according to some opaque criteria that I don't get to define or tweak

Exactly this. When I saw the tabbed inbox, my first thought was, "oh, this
will be cool", followed shortly by, "wait, I don't get to control or customize
this _at all_?"

Really, why can't I define my own tabs for specific searches/labels? The black
box tabs they provide now should just have been defaults within a customizable
feature.

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arkem
You can customize it but the UI isn't particularly obvious. You can drag
emails between tabs to teach gmail which is the most appropriate tab, you can
also designate inboxes as a filter action.

Personally I think it's a great feature but one I won't be using because I
already have a labyrinth of filter rules that perform the same function.

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b1daly
I've been surprised at how well the new tab system has been working. How could
you make a filter that would sort on the broad criteria of "promotions" and
"social"?

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norfish
Some machine learning algorithm; it's not so different from classifying emails
as spam/not spam.

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Kiro
He/she asked how to do it with filters.

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dotcoma
FastMail(.fm) costs $19.95 per year with 1 GB of storage and $39.95 with 10 GB
of storage. And no ads, no NSA etc.

Stop complaining. Change provider.

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conroy
From the Fastmail thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6070070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6070070)

Fastmail has servers in the United States
([https://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_about.html](https://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_about.html)),
which means the NSA can still request access to those servers.

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nmjenkins
I work for FastMail. We (Opera Software Australia) are an Australian company,
subject to Australian privacy laws regardless of the location of our servers.
We legally must only respond to Australian law enforcement agencies with valid
Australian warrants (summary of the law is available here:
[https://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Privacy/tia.html](https://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Privacy/tia.html)).

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windsurfer
What happens if your hosting company gets an NSA request to access your
servers?

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samsquire
Funny that the industry fights spam until it comes full circle and starts
introducing its own version of spam but it's not called spam, it's
advertising.

cf. Facebook, Gmail, LinkedIn, Twitter

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znowi
That's nothing. Wait till they start streaming context dependent ads straight
to your Google Glass :)

* Getting in your 2008 Toyota... Tada! An ad presenting the 2013 model.

* Walking by a Nike store... Tada! An ad featuring new sneakers.

* About to make love and for some reason left your Glass on... Tada! A safe sex promotion ad.

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sjwright
> About to make love

Would be amused to see the criteria/logic used to isolate that scenario!
Perhaps if Glass was monitoring current room, spoken words, heartbeat...

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x0054
You can also pay for google apps and get ad free interface with tech support,
last I checked.

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tluyben2
Serious question (couldn't find it and mailing Google is not very effective
usually): can I keep my current email address and convert it to paid Google
apps? It would be absolutely useless if not :)

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tokenizerrr
I don't think so, at least not directly. Paid google apps requires you to use
your own domain name as far as I know. Even so, you can set your old account
to forward to your new, and add your old account as a sender on your new and
make it the default. That way all email you send/receive on the new account
will go to/come from the old account.

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tokenizerrr
It does actually seem to be the case, I was wrong [1].

[1]: [http://btsync.s3-website-us-
east-1.amazonaws.com/BitTorrentS...](http://btsync.s3-website-us-
east-1.amazonaws.com/BitTorrentSyncUserGuide.pdf)

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comex
I think you replied to the wrong post.

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tokenizerrr
I meant to correct myself since I could no longer edit.

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sigkill
I'm reasonably certain that this is far more sinister than a simple
advertisement tactic. No, dear people, this has all the similarity to Google's
411 service. I have this feeling that Google has implemented some new nifty
ML-algorithms and we are giving them the training data. "We" are those people
who aren't techy and think 'Sweet, I can classify my email nicely now'.

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aroman
Sometimes I would really like to switch from Gmail, but I look around at the
alternatives and think "do I trust this to be as reliable as Gmail? as stable?
as dependable?"

The answer is always no. I hope I'm believing an illusion, but regardless, I
still feel like Google's infrastructure is the only one I'd trust with my
emails.

Reliability > privacy for me (for now)

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seiji
It's email, not a Volvo. email is one of the most fault tolerant things on the
Internet. Start hosting it yourself. You'll be okay (plus, procmail!).

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packetslave
_You 'll be okay_

Until you realize half your outbound mail isn't getting delivered because the
person who had your VPC's IP before you was a spammer, or because you didn't
correctly navigate the labyrinth of DKIM, SPF, feedback loops, and arbitrary
recipient mail server policies.

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seiji
Very good points. I use a third party TLS SMTP server for most outgoing stuff.

Realistically, DKIM, SPF, and other overbearing qualifications should only
triggered if you're doing mass mailings. Ideally, you shouldn't get denied
delivery if you're using an unqualified personal server (that, as you
mentioned, hasn't previously been 100% blocked due to bad behavior by anybody
in the past ever).

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anuaitt
I don't understand why people are making a fuss about it. It shows only when
you have chosen your inbox to show different categories. Secondly it shows
only in promotional email subscriptions. Not disturbing "Primary tab".

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area51org
I have four Gmail accounts, and I've indeed seen this, but only two or three
times.

Anyone seeing this all the time?

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Kiro
I don't mind.

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imonkey
That's why I switch on iCloud mail!

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manishm
ah those are under promotions tab anyway, how does this affect?

