Google reveals plan for big change to Gmail. 19 days to object | Hacker News Reader

Google reveals plan for big change to Gmail. 19 days to object

inc.com

67 pointsthund35 comments

I’d love to read this, but …

“Article continues after video.”

So I scroll past the video, which unfortunately decides to attach itself to the top of my phone screen and command 1/3 of my whole browser window. What’s wrong with these people designing these kinds of web sites? They must be crazy thinking it will generate more revenue?

I spent 3ish years making these kinds of websites (specifically those click bait-y “Can you name these Canadian snack foods??” quiz sites). They generate _a lot_ more revenue. Like more than double.

Digital publishing’s main business model is paying as little as possible for 1 click and monetizing that click as much as possible on the other end. The sales “funnel” isn’t a funnel here, its just two steps “1. Show link to article . 2. Show ads.”

Now if you’re an organic heavy site like NFL.com, you get plenty of free clicks just by reposting articles to social media. Its more important to keep your brand strong with a couple of small, highly paid ad units.

But if you’re just an average publisher, you gotta literally pay for attention. It turns into a game of spending $1.00 for an ad on Facebook/Tabola/Outbrain/Snap/etc and trying to make $1.30 when they land on the page.

Long term bet IMO is still high quality organic content makes more profit, but you can still make a lot with 3-4 engineers and average-ish content.

Thanks for reminding me of the pleasure I feel having a setup that ignores all of the work you and other like you have done in this field. Personally, this whole comment is ludicrous… but I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s just a smell

I agree hahaha. That’s why I got out.

3ish years! I hope the pay was good!

Pay was great, people were excellent, location was by the beach, just couldn’t handle spending 40 hours a week tricking old people into clicking on banner ads. I wish I could! Everything else was great.

Now I’m a sales engineer and get to help people actually solve problems :)

Fair play brother.

Thanks for the insight. The relatively low margins you suggest indicate that it might be possible to make this awfulness unprofitable with relatively small changes.

Yup, it’s already happening. Getting rid of third party cookies was a big one.

Downside is if you can’t advertise with banner ads, you need another way. Trend seems to be making content that’s just a big ad (e.g. anything that’s a top 10 list)

Yes the website is a pain to use with all the re-rendering. I take the content less seriously when it's like that

Because the article is painfully unaware of its surroundings.

Do you hate spam in gmail? More about that below… BUT FIRST we must slam this ad right into the center of your field of vision that is seemingly impossible to scroll-flee.

I once stupidity signed up to I think Obama's newsletter and since then no matter how many times I unsubscribe or mark email as spam I still get bombarded.

The DNC and probably also the RNC just ignore it even though it is probably illegal. I get spam from random new candidates I never heard off. I believe the DNC just keep sending out some master list they have to new and exciting DNC members without cleaning the list.

The trick is, all these groups share their mailing lists. So you opt out of ActBlue, but they've already shared your email with the Obama 2008 campaign. Then you opt out of that, but it's too late because they've already shared your email with Hope PAC and the priorities USA superpac. So finally you've unsubscribed from all that BS, just in time for you to get emails from the Reelect Obama 2012 Committee

> no matter how many times I unsubscribe or mark email as spam I still get bombarded.

I agree that it shouldn't be necessary, but, why not set up a filter to block that sender?

The sender changes every campaign, every state senator has his/her own address.

That sounds truly horrifying. I won't presume you want a suggestion, but after switching to protonmail, the feeling of using a product rather than being one, is refreshing.

I find it pretty nice to give each service I sign up for a specific E-Mail address with the plus-addition (mail+dumb_service@domain.com). It's just annoying that you can't configure them as sender addresses with the providers I use.

Why can't they just give everyone the option of whether they want all political emails, or for such emails to be treated like other emails (hence possibly regarded as spam)? If they really thought hard, maybe they could give users the ability to choose amongst spam algorithms!

A firm in a competitive market would certainly give their customers this option. Of course, Google isn't in a competitive market, and they don't consider gmail users to be customers.

The context here is that every time one politician’s or party’s email goes to spam more often than the other’s, they whip everybody into an anti-Google frenzy about “political manipulation”.

Google, as usual, is insightful in their response: by acting quickly and aggressively to separate users into classes, they minimize the number of users who benefit from one class’s wins, and turn users against each other to disrupt the formation of any unified movement that questions Google’s unilateral control of email.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32080798

(5 days ago; 49 points, 21 comments)

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32077496

This sort of nonsense is exactly why I switched to Hey email. If you want a good email service free from spyware and spam you’re going to have to pay for it. No free lunch.

Is this something google is being pressured to do or do they really consider this a good idea? I mean. What’s in it for them?

It says it in the article. Basically it's a way to get around the bias question.

What I don't get is why they need to talk to the FEC anyway? Are they obligated to provide spam detection? Couldn't they just decide to not spam these emails rather than making a big deal out of it?

They’re stuck working with the FEC due to the complaint alleging that their spam rules are illegal de facto donations. At this point, they’d want to make sure any major changes to political email filtering are acceptable to the regulator.

Also by asking the FEC to weigh in and approve this before moving forward, google is in a much stronger position: if they’re not approved to move forward, the FEC can now be the bad guy; if they do approve to move forward, then they don’t get hit later because the FEC gave the stamp of approval.

They can sell metrics about the emails (e.g. open rate) to the campaigns.

FWIW, Congress has a "franking privilege" which allows senators and congressmen to send snail-mail free of postage. This privilege has been controversial, but afaik still exists.

It does and it indeed is controversial. And perhaps not surprisingly the more vulnerable a representative's seat is the more they abuse this. To put some perspective on the cost:

>"In total, House members spent about $6 million on mail franking in the first quarter of 2016."[1]

Yes, that's for just a single quarter.

[1] https://rollcall.com/2016/08/10/house-members-send-mail-on-t...

Does this change help 3rd parties (e.g. the Green party)?

Great point.

I am a Libertarian and we don’t SPAM people. But I would hope that all political parties get the same treatment.

BTW, I block email addresses and that works fairly well. To be honest, I don’t care much what Google does here.

The Libertarian party is incredibly amateurish compared to either major party. My wife helped a local candidate canvas, talked to lots of local libertarians an… nothing. No contact list, no keeping track, so no ability to keep building on your contacts.

Until the Libertarian National Convention is more than a place to do hard drugs and embarrass the party by the chair literally being drunk during business, it’s not worth supporting the party.

It is. I made the mistake of selecting L instead of NPA when registering once, trying to get away from a bigger party.

They literally just sent me one piece of mail with every L candidate in local, state, and national elections printed out. No pictures, no hello, no platform. Just a creepy list of names.

As someone from outside the US: From online interactions, I get the feeling that it is quite typical for regular American people to get cold contacted by political candidates via mail, phone, text or even in person.

How much of that impression is just bias by people complaining who forgot that they signed up for that?

(For context: Where I am you would see parties having an open air infodesk in the center of town or a regulated number of TV / online ads and signs around election season)

You’re automatically “opted-in” by registering to vote. The parties all get access to your address, phone number and any additional contact information you included in your voter registration.

Political parties are also exempt from the do-not-call list rules and anti-spam rules. They carved themselves out some nice exemptions.

So, how long have you worked for the DNC. Sorry, but you sound like the democrats jumping through hoops trying to remove 3rd party candidates from ballots - illegally. The republicans aren’t quite as bad doing this.

If you don’t believe in a free and open representative democracy, just say so.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com