I disagree. At the end of the day, Google's business is selling ads to the highest bidder. Gmail is an ad conduit, but Google Reader was not.
Gmail isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Gmail isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
However - selling email advertisers prime position for their precious emails and conveniently "bouncing", "hiding", or marking any non-paid emails as "spam" is much, much more lucrative.
He's not arguing that gmail isn't an ad conduit - he's arguing that they're not efficiently monetizing the email sector as best they can (and Inbox is another attempt to improve that).
There's no guarantee of that at all.
All these conspiracy theories about Inbox seem to be using overly simplistic black and white reasoning. If Google didn't enrich emails with relevant information that users might eventually find as indispensable as a spam filter, somebody else would and steal their users, given how easy they've made it to move off their service. The jury's still out as to whether Inbox represents such an improvement, but it is obvious to me what its purpose is.
My point is that so far, everything points to Inbox falling on the "get/keep more users" side of the spectrum as opposed to the "increase monetization on existing users" side, similar to how Google Now tries to keep users giving information to Google as opposed to show them ads directly. It may eventually do both, but the former is what the current features target.
This isn't the point of the article--nothing in it even implies anything about people buying a spot in your inbox--and selling an advertising email slot guaranteed not to fall into the spam folder would be the dumbest move an email provider could possibly make.
We also only have to look as far as the fact that sometimes email from Google themselves gets put in the spam folder to see the likelihood of this coming to pass.
> and selling an advertising email slot guaranteed not to fall into the spam folder would be the dumbest move an email provider could possibly make.
Explain your thinking here?
Except it's not the point. The article points out that it's moving to mediated consumption of email instead of just a good interface on "here's all your email". There's no argument about cash flow in the article, and you'll have to actually demonstrate that they're moving in that monetization direction to assert it.
Meanwhile I'm not sure what a non-hyperbolic version of "buying a spot" would be, so you'll have to specify for me to respond to it.
>> and selling an advertising email slot guaranteed not to fall into the spam folder would be the dumbest move an email provider could possibly make.
> Explain your thinking here?
Google makes money if people choose to use their products. Since so many people already use Google products today, there is some lock in due to convenience (all my email is already in there, I have an Android phone at least until my contract renews, etc), but offering a spam filter that doesn't work as long as someone is willing to pay would be a death blow.
The Promotions tab contains advertising in email, but it's the advertising you signed up for. For some reason this blows people's minds, but people really do sign up for those email updates from businesses to see new products and deals. Having a way to organize those emails is not some sinister new advertising plot by google.
Not to mention that an offer by google to make sure spam bypasses the spam filter for only 1 cent per 1000 messages or whatever is kind of going to get noticed.
(Yet). Google is an ad company. They will.
> the promos folder hides their marketing spam
Would it surprise you that some people actually sign up for newsletters they want to read?
When people read their mail they are immersed in content they care about. Your ads are the furthest thing from their mind. When people browse news etc., their connection to the content is far more relaxed. When they are searching, they are often happy to see ads if well targeted. Yahoo got as aggressive about mail ads as they did because people were extra blind to ads in Mail.
I know I behave that way: I never click on ads in Gmail, but in Google search results I quite often intentionally look at the ads and sometimes prefer the ads to the organic results.
Mail was seen as a traffic driver, rather than mainly a revenue source: People check their e-mail a lot; and when they're done, or if there are no new messages, they may very well look at other content.
Of course many things change in a decade, but I don't think peoples mail behaviour has changed all that much.
I think Google's strategy was to get their ads into people's feeds with services like FeedBurner, but when that didn't go over so well they didn't see much use for Reader.