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Comment by OoTheNigerian | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"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

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.

This response made me actually laugh out loud, mostly because of the delivery combined with it's accuracy in alluding to something very important:

We often seem to look at an issue from the other's point of view and deem it wrong or okay based on that. Why? Why not look at these situations that affect us directly from our point of view? Sometimes all that matters is you. This is one of those times.

Also: note the originating username.

Bravo sir, bravo. Not sure why you felt the need to create a throwaway account for it as it is a completely valid point of view. To completely capture the meme though a "and git off my lawn!" is needed there at the end :-)

As for your rhetorical question about who cares, I'm guessing the folks who've seen Google stock go from $600 to $900 are wondering if its time to switch to something else. If you're anonymous opinion is common among their users then the answer to their question would be "yes, definitely."

I don't disagree with you, but it took me all of 2 seconds to disable the new tabs. I haven't seen any of the ads mentioned in the original tweet, so maybe this is a solution?

To do it: Hit the Plus sign at the edge of the tabs, and uncheck everything except Primary. You'll be displayed a message saying that you disabled the new tabs.

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.

I agree but I suspect the choices are subscriptions or ads. As the Internet has matured the 'free' option is going away. Developers of course will be able to fund their own infrastructure (sort of a self subscribe model :-) but the 'free' internet is definitely going away.

> the 'free' internet is definitely going away.

I really don't see that, we still have a huge number of free application. Maybe google is having some issues (google reader and gmail) but you still have a huge number of alternatives that are still free.

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.

Absolutely, but Google runs experiments all the time. If underwhoring would boost their CPC then those experiments will surface that fact. That it hasn't suggested to me that alternatives have cut into their margins. Since nobody likes to cede margin, they can either ride it into the ground (a common response) or change. Either way it will be different.

> 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.

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.

The promotions tab is NOT where you go to actively look for deals. You do that on Groupon.

The promotion tab is where you get promotional emails from services that you have OPTED IN to receive emails from.

So is it far game if the Viagra emails only appear in the promotion's tab?

Google is sending spam (unsolicited emails). That is all there is s to say about it.

One could argue that signing up for a Google service is enough to form a "business relationship" with them. Just like how if you buy a new pair of rocket skis from ACME, you're likely to get promotional email from them featuring sales on anvils.

In which case I'm sure Google will provide an unsubscribe option.

It already has, it's called Delete Account

Google is not sending spam. If you use IMAP, those never show up. Google is making it appear that there are emails there.

> The promotions tab is NOT where you go to actively look for deals. You do that on Groupon.

Is that a joke?

The detractors are just here to bash unashamed.

This really makes a lot of sense. You have pretty overt ads displayed, and deletable, within a tab devoted to ads. It's pretty much the best scenario imaginable for an ad supported service.

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.

If you are following an inbox zero approach (as I am), then there's not much point in using the sectioned inbox IMO. I guess it might be useful if you receive tons of email and you want to sort of go through it in an ordered manner, but normally I tend to unsubscribe from things I am not interested in, so there are little or no messages in the other sections.

I do inbox zero as implied above and I thought I'd hate the sectioned tabs but I actually love it. Only because I make sure the primary inbox is cleared constantly, but can take my time getting to the social one (where it's very easy to just select all and delete).

You can disable all the tabs and return to your normal inbox.

For now.

Which is where we currently live, so that's good.

I think people are mad because it seems inevitable that, like all other new Gmail features/UI changes/etc., it will become mandatory within less than a year.

How do you do that?

Click on the + sign next to the tabs. Uncheck everything except "Primary" (which you can't uncheck anyway)

You know what's funny? You do that and when you look there are still unread things in there that it pulls from the inbox. Once you dispose of them in the inbox, they do disappear, though.

There's actually a number of different inbox layouts available in Settings.

That, unfortunately, doesn't seem to work on the Android client (did that for the webapp). I'd give the app a bad rating for becoming more and more crappy, but I have no G+ account, cannot have a G+ account and therefor are unable to participate..

I disabled it on the web client and those labels do not appear on the Android app for me.

Additionally, you can disable the promotions tab individually. I just have "Updates" and "Forums". For now, it seems very easy to opt out.

I'm not sure that your OCD is their problem.

On the contrary, they take advantage of this kind of behavior to ensure that he sees their ads. It's a problem they created and exacerbate for their own profit.

This is the whole point of 'gamification.' Dropping a number back down to zero is a form of this.

Total # of emails however can be setup to show only your "Primary" inbox. This allows me to check the other tabs much much less often since I'm only motivated to keep the # to 0.

This was my reaction to the tabs as well - now I have three inboxes to keep clean instead of one! I disabled them as soon as I could figure out how to.

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

Did you pay for it?

No.

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

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.

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.

That is true for most cases, but when shareholders and business come into the picture, the honest developers don't get a look in. It's shut up or don't get paid.

If Google lost 25% of its free userbase and converted only 10% of that 25% into Google Apps customers, and left the other 75% with advertising clicks it's a win situation for the business and shareholders.

Google is not immune to capitalism or business mantra unfortunately.

For reference, as an idealist and a bit of a Marxist, I'm not a fan of this but it's the way it is at the moment.

I think this is always a confusion point. Prior to the internet "user" and "customer" were pretty much synonymous. Now they can be entirely different. Users get confused when they miss this critical distinction.

No, everything is not new on the internet. Historically, this has always been the Media business model (newspaper, radio, TV, magazines, etc). Editors have balanced users and customers for a 100+ years.

Yes I agree. Good point.

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

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.

Your screen is only payment if they can put something they want there.

They always could put what they wanted on parts of the screen. Now they want wastly bigger or more expensive parts of tjat screen.

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.

The point is you get what you give. If you want a "better" service, it's going to cost you. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

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...

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

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

While they were never exactly the same visually, they show up under the search field, have the same link and text structure...the only difference in the lightly shaded background

I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but the shading seems to have gotten a lot lighter. It used to be quite clear what was a search ad and what was a result, but now you have to look closely.

There's really no way to know that unless you work for Google. Some of the ads show up with a shaded background, maybe some of them don't?

That is basically the original meaning of "don't be evil", or at least the one used in the IPO documents.

You would probably know, since it's hard to sell ads like that without telling people.

> 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

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.

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