Slashdot Mirror
Is Google Playing Fair With Groupon, et al?
An anonymous reader writes with the claim (illustrated with what seems like damning screen-shot evidence) that "Google is using Gmail's priority inbox to give special treatment to its own daily deal emails over all the rest."
who would have thought a for profit company would ever try to push its products and services before the competition?
google gives you a free email account, then uses it to market stuff to you. why would anyone be surprised, or upset? there are many free email options out there, use another one if you don't like how this one works.
I dont see how, google is not the only email web client solution on the net and no one is forced to use it (and honestly I dont see the appeal, its clunky IMO)
So, some random blogger posts a screenshot and we implicitly trust it's contents? I could do this with Greasemonkey to GIMP. I am no Google apologist, but my spidey sense it tingling like when I get an email full of "Amazing Pictures" from my grandma.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Damning screenshot evidence? No way that can be faked.
I wonder if that message is marked as important because you read the other message from Google (the Welcome message)? I can only assume that messages are marked important / non-important based on your reading habits and with so little to go on maybe that is all it takes for GMail to consider the message "Important"?
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
I dont see how, google is not the only email web client solution on the net and no one is forced to use it (and honestly I dont see the appeal, its clunky IMO)
No one was forced to use Microsoft but their product was so common that the judge determined that them encouraging customers to use another one of their products was illegal. I guess the call here is determining if Google is a monopoly on the search business.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
...just in time for an antitrust investigation. Who at Google thought this was a good idea, anyway?
Most likely, no one, because mostly likely no one thought of it at all.
My bet is that this the result of a generic rule that boosts the importance of e-mails from Google, you know so that you're sure to see announcements of new gmail features, or Google account-related messages, etc., but no one thought to make an exception for Offers.
Given that Offers and gmail come from different groups within Google, and I'd expect that no one on the Offers team knows much about how priority inbox is implemented and no one on the gmail team was thinking much about Offers other than to note there was a launch party, I can see exactly how this would happen. Or maybe it is intentional... but I doubt it.
What will happen next is that the Priority Inbox rules will be modified to avoid giving any undue precedence to Google Offers, and lots of slashdotters will believe that Google was being Evil and only stopped when caught, regardless of the facts of the situation.
(Disclaimer: I'm a software engineer at Google, but I don't work on Offers or gmail.)
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Do you know how easy it is to create a filter to de-prioritize emails in Gmail? Gmail filters are the easiest things in the world to use. I don't know why ANYONE would complain about this when they can correct it in about three clicks.
and honestly I dont see the appeal, its clunky IMO
Android integration
who would have thought a for profit company would ever try to push its products and services before the competition?
send yourself an email marked with 'high importance' and it ends up in your priority inbox...so google is sending their offer emails with 'high importance' where other companies aren't, how is this a story at all?
The Screen Shot isn't daming google. In fact, all it shows is that the default setting for importance for Google offers on Gmail is High. Go figure. This is another case of a nho news story getting by meta moderation. Cmon guys. We can do better than this.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Requires that you pay a non-monetary price. Nothing to see here folks.
I think people are missing the point. Of course this is not surprising. Of course a for-profit company wants to advertise their own products. Of course they want you to use their stuff before you use Groupon et al. Of course. The point is, Google touts itself as providing a fair service that doesn't favor its own services (as conflicting as that may be). It claims that its algorithms are unbiased. I think that is all the author was trying to point out (i.e. they may not be as unbiased as Google is touting themselves to be... as unsurprising as it is). A small point but an important one.
Google may be in a monopoly or nearabouts position in search, but they definitely do not have a monopoly over email. If their search algorithms were biased in favor of their products, that would be a big deal for an antitrust case. Biased email prioritization? Not so much. Using one product as leverage to promote another is legal, like it or not, and it happens all the time. Only when you use a product that is in a monopoly position as leverage does that become illegal.
Personally, I read email in thunderbird, so I do not use this prioritization feature. As a user, I would become annoyed the moment the system does not follow my indications, but slightly biased defaults would not really be an issue for me.
You don't have to see how, you just have to pay attention. Google has confirmed that they are facing an antitrust inquiry from the FTC, right now, and I doubt that this sort of behavior is going to look very good.
Palm trees and 8
In this instance, the call would be whether or not Google is a monopoly for the email market. They aren't even in first place, so it would be hard for us to call them a monopoly wouldn't it?
An important change for education.
Google is already facing an inquiry from the FTC. All you need to do is pay attention to the news: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/ftc-launching-antitrust-probe-over-google-search-ad-businesses.ars This sort of thing is not going to look very good to the FTC.
How so? If you send an email with the 'high importance' flag it ends up in your priority inbox the same way as emails from google.
I agree. I use a Mac and Apple already does something similar with a rule to highlight messages from Apple (they get a different background color so they stand out). I don't really see the harm in this and it's easily disabled (an a Mac anyway..Not sure about Google).
Anyone can send an offer with High Priority so I don't see how this is 'unfair' as far as that goes.
Guess it's nice to know that Google wont be using Priority Inbox with me as I've got it turned off. Didn't need or want the feature when it was offered so disabled it right away. Anyone else who didn't either has a need for the damn thing or doesn't have a clue how to setup labels and filters to do what they want.
In other words, nothing to see here citizen, move along.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Just mark it as unimportant, and next time you get it should not hit Priority Inbox any more. :)
That probe is fully legitimate, probing this as an antitrust violation would be absurdly silly.
They haven't the market share necessary for this to be an antitrust violation by themselves nor is there any reason to suspect collusion as it's all being done internally. It might suck for Groupon and the others, but this is hardly going to have much of an impact on them anyways, at least not anymore than getting caught up in overly zealous spam filters.
The Slashdot definition of monopoly seems to be "making more money than I think they should have."
I think it's been established for some time that the spam filter is heavily automated and that things like a person labeling a message as spam has a significant impact on how it's received. I've often suspected that if a message is labeled as spam in one account and it's in other accounts that it gets labeled as spam there as well.
Cross selling or bundling is only an issue if there is a monopoly. Gmail is hardly a monopoly. Gmail is 3rd behind Microsoft and Yahoo for webmail market share.
The antitrust inquiry is for their search product, where they have an overwhelming percent of the market (to the point where Googling is a common verb, even among non-techies). Priority Inbox is a feature of their largely unrelated email product. While Gmail has a nice chunk of the market, it's hardly overwhelming. Hotmail and Yahoo both have nice chunks of market share as well.
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
Which is completely optional.
Unlike in United States v. Microsoft, where IE was just a double click away, to setup Gmail on Android you must provide your login info. If you tap cancel during the setup, you will end up in the Android home screen. Then you're free to install any mail client of your choice.
People actually use "services" like Groupon and whatever this Google thing is? That's the real scoop to me, anyway.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
However, you did sign up for a service from a company using the same company account to do it... If yougot email notifications for edits to shared google docs, tied to your email account, would you not expect this? Google "knows" you asked for it, the same can't be said of the other services. Also, this seems to be tied to the "high" importance header in the emails, not anything directly with gmail.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Why would any "offer", obviously bulk mail, ever go into the "Priority inbox"? Even if you wanted it, it should go into the "Bulk" folder.
I would like to see a feature added to mail programs which allows me to set a price level above which I would be interested in reading a piece of mail. LinkedIn attempted to do this with their InMail, except they set the level and they keep the fee. The $5 fee is so high that no one pays it, and instead recruiters spam you by inviting you to join their network. I'd like to set the level and I'd like to receive the fee if I open their piece of mail. If Groupon or Google Offers really wants me to read their mail, they could simply attach some postage to it. Gmail would see the postage amount and prioritize it based on my preferences. Like a CPM ad, if I don't open the email, the sender wouldn't get charged the postage.
This so far has proven a very popular, but unprofitable market segment. Only a matter of time before Groupon is bust.
No one was forced to use Microsoft but their product was so common that the judge determined that them encouraging customers to use another one of their products was illegal
Fail, fail, FAIL.
Are you a shill, an apologist, have a short memory or were too young to remember?
Microsoft's antitrust problem came from them making "deals" with OEMs (companies like Dell that sell PCs to business and in stores) that basically said "if you put Netscape on the computer instead of Internet Explorer then we'll make you pay full price per Windows copy instead of OEM price (ie. +$100 more expensive)", they also had the wonderful "if you offer anything other than Windows, even if Windows is the main thing you sell, then we'll cut you off and not sell you any Windows copies at all". Then the less overt "let's just delete these APIs that Netscape uses so it won't run any more" and the "Let's create custom APIs in Windows just for IE that only IE uses and aren't documented in order to get a performance edge". Microsoft was a giant douche in the late 90s, they're better now but that these games still happen on smaller scale.
What Google is doing here (if true) is clearly unethical but not antitrust since they aren't blocking, filtering or hiding-by-default the competition and you can alter the settings to remove the bias.
I strongly suspect you did it to drive page hits.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The truthful and accurate definition of a monopoly is one in which the consumer choice for a product or service resides with a single company.
Obviously Google is not just an email services provider and I am not finding it unreasonable that Google would advertise and sell advertising space to those that receive free email service.
I deal with a large amount of customers in various databases and I can say that I don't see GMail having such a huge percentage of the market share (based on domains in the email with a group by query).
Hardly a monopoly, and whoever said life is fair, much less business? If you believe that a free market is fair, I have a bridge to sell you.
This is a non-story. In fact, I would be very surprised if Google did not push any service it offers above all other competing services through any service that it provides. That isn't evil either.
Those people made a "pact with the Devil" so to speak when they got their GMail account to begin with. This may sound snobbish, but if you don't have your own domain pointed towards an email server through your company, or a private upsell through something like GoDaddy, don't try representing yourself as a professional.
The sheeple wan't free, but actually want it with no strings attached? Just how was Google supposed to make money by giving away free email accounts again?
LOL. Groupon is bitching? They just had a ridiculous IPO and could just make a deal with Google to get their email through with priority service and be done with it. Whining about it is actually quite funny to tell the truth.
Given that Offers and gmail come from different groups within Google, and I'd expect that no one on the Offers team knows much about how priority inbox is implemented and no one on the gmail team was thinking much about Offers other than to note there was a launch party, I can see exactly how this would happen. Or maybe it is intentional... but I doubt it.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh yes it is very much as you suspect. You work for Google? You have to know that Google is like a creature with a hundred arms and that on any one day, one arm might meet the next one for the very first time.
This is absolutely confirmed with YouTube and those responsible for Google authentication. Those teams do NOT communicate very well and remind me of how NASA crashed a billion dollars into Mars.
I have been told point blank by people working on the YouTube API that they don't fully understand, have full access, or good documentation for the authentication portion of that absolutely massive API you guys have over there. I authenticate through Google, then make my request through YouTube. If I want a good reliable answer I need to limit my questions to YouTube.
P.S - This is not really a rant. Those guys on the YouTube API are really nice guys. You would be surprised by how much crap they have to put up with from frustrated programmers. Due, in part, to the level of cooperation between all of your departments at Google. I'm sure that is not exactly news to you is it?
Google doesn't have a monopoly in e-mail. Not even close. They can - legally and ethically - use their e-mail service to market whatever they want to you. If they want, they can fill your inbox with spam about Google Docs, Google Maps, Android. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
I'm getting a bit sick of bogus "anti-competitive" stories. Restrictions on this sort of thing only apply *if you're a monopoly*. If you're not, you can do all the cross promotion and bundling you want. Consumers get to decide whether they like it, and whether they want to take their business elsewhere. You're not obliged to 'play fair' with any of your competitors.
The difference is that Microsoft's monopoly could create an effective barrier to entry for potential competitors. The web does not permit the creation of that sort of a barrier. Google can't force anyone to use its offerings, so it's hard to see how it could be considered to be in the same camp. I'm quite free to use Bing or Yahoo if I want, with no potential for Google to disadvantage me in any way.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
... since everyone and his brother is getting into this game. Out of the blue I started getting "daily local deals" from Amazon - and they just signed me up without asking. Facebook's done that as well.
I don't like Google mis-using its position in this case; but (once it's offered in my area) I'd be more upset about getting opted-in automatically than what priority the email arrives with. I don't want to get these sorts of emails, period. I've got a twitchy trigger finger when it comes to flagging spam.
#DeleteChrome
Is slashdot trying to chase away customers by posting more and more troll pieces?
This is the source for this bit of "news". :-(
Come on, Slashdot... don't disappoint me...
The opt-in SPAM from you shows up on the top of your free e-mail service, above all the other opt-in SPAM I get. I don't see how your SPAM could possibly be more important than other SPAM on your own service. This is unfair, and I call shenanigans. Now excuse me while I go and purchase some more coupons for massages and manicures.
Or maybe it is intentional... but I doubt it.
Actually, I suspect it was indeed intentional, but at the same time, completely understandable. Think about it. When you start getting this emails from groupon and other discount websites, what does google know about it? They know is the emails just suddenly started appearing in your inbox, and they know that you never bothered to click on the welcome email. That's not very convincing that you are actually interested in the emails.
Now, what does google know about your subscription to google offers? Well, they know it was you who intentionally signed up, because they know you went out of your way and did it WHILE LOGGED INTO YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT. Whether or not you clicked on any emails in your gmail account is a complete red herring, because they already had all the information necessary to authenticate the legitimacy of those emails even before the first welcome email arrived in your inbox.
But that was because there was no viable alternative desktop, there are plenty of viable search alternatives, and they are ALL free!
The Slashdot definition of monopoly seems to be "making more money than I think they should have."
The thing is, Google is a monopoly by the measurements of most regulatory agencies (controlling a sufficient percentage of the market).
The thing that the alarmists get wrong is that unlike certain other IT monopolies, Google is a natural monopoly, maintained by natural means (I.E. better products, not vendor lock in). Monopolies are not intrinsically bad, they can occur simply because the competition is not good enough. This is the case with search, Google has blocked no one from entering the search market.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
My bet is that this the result of a generic rule that boosts the importance of e-mails from Google, you know so that you're sure to see announcements of new gmail features, or Google account-related messages, etc., but no one thought to make an exception for Offers.
Excuse me for saying, but that does sounds like what the original article was claiming is a problem, and a parallel of the complaint in the anti-trust probes: I believe the concern is that Google's algorithms by default deem all content, email, and services from Google as "important" but do not offer the same by-default automatic promotion to their competitors. The article author's claim is that this advantages Google's products over its products over its competitors'.
Given that Offers and gmail come from different groups within Google, and I'd expect that no one on the Offers team knows much about how priority inbox is implemented and no one on the gmail team was thinking much about Offers other than to note there was a launch party, I can see exactly how this would happen. Or maybe it is intentional... but I doubt it.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out -- as the Web more and more becomes people's desktop I think we'll see more of these kind of complaints. With Microsoft, it was possible to see arguments of "we just thought it'd be really useful to include a free media player and a web browser", but nonetheless the big stick was swung against them for bundling. Is there an equivalent of bundling in the Web world? Will litigiousness about this go to the extent that because Google's search home page links directly to GMail but not other email services (and the browser is the new desktop) that's deemed equivalent to every MS Windows desktop install having an Internet Explorer icon but no Opera icon by default? After all, you could install Opera onto the Windows desktop but you can't install Yahoo mail onto the Google search homepage (though you can into iGoogle).
Caveat: I'm mostly just an interested bystander (academic), though I do sometimes feel mildly uncomfortable from a libertarian perspective that theoretically it would now be very hard for someone to avoid giving Google data about themselves -- if they don't get it via search or email, they'll get it via Google Analytics installed on the other sites you visit. I think Google is now in a much more entrenched monopoly position than Microsoft was -- MS at its monopolistic height never had your data, they just constrained the format you had it in; Google does have your data and for much of it there is no "delete". That's quite a well-fortified position. You cannot simply take your eighteen-months-of-search-and-browsing-history that Google mine to a different provider.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yet it is closely interlinked because Google Offers is just the kind of thing that Google is using the search engine to drive traffic to, traffic that would otherwise go to competitors. This is just demonstrating that no one at Google is taking the anti competitive business practice stuff seriously.
GMail is not in a position of market dominance, at least not according to TFS. So, it's a free service funded by ads, and it promotes them using built-in system of the service? Somehow I don't see an issue here. However, if somebody feels they're getting spam they did not opt in to and can't unsubscribe from, then I'm sure there's room for juicy lawsuit, based on spam laws. But that's not the case here, is it?
Every time someone on Slashdot complains about a group mentality on Slashdot they invalidate their own argument.
Caveat: I'm mostly just an interested bystander (academic), though I do sometimes feel mildly uncomfortable from a libertarian perspective that theoretically it would now be very hard for someone to avoid giving Google data about themselves -- if they don't get it via search or email, they'll get it via Google Analytics installed on the other sites you visit.
Google recognizes that discomfort and provides tools for you to address it. I suppose some would argue that "opt-in" is a more appropriate model than "opt-out", but at least Google does make it possible -- and easy -- to opt out of all of their tracking.
Go to google.com, click the "Privacy" link at the bottom, then click "Privacy tools" in the left-hand navigation column to see all of the privacy settings and tools that Google provides. They even make browser plugins that will ensure that you *stay* opted out, even when cookies are deleted, etc.
I realize a lot of people find it very hard to believe that a corporation really would want to help people to avoid the tracking that is in the corporations best interest, but Google's perspective is that long-term the very best approach is to do the thing that is right for the user. Google feels that it acts responsibly with the user information it collects, and that it can use that information to provide a better user experience, helping people to find what they need faster and easier (and this includes ads -- Google's perspective on ads is that any ad you see that is not something you're interested in and find useful is a failure on their part), so that people will want to allow Google to gather the information, but also recognizes that people have legitimate privacy concerns and that they really should be able to avoid the tracking if they don't want it. The company really is committed to helping people maintain their privacy, even if it comes at the expense of Google's short-term bottom line. At least, that's what I see from my perspective as an employee.
There are a whole lot of very libertarian-minded folks at Google, you know, and it's not the type of company where top-down command-and-control directives telling employees to violate their own moral principles work very well.
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Or maybe it is intentional... but I doubt it.
Actually, I suspect it was indeed intentional, but at the same time, completely understandable.
I agree, but I think you're using "intentional" in a slightly different way than I was. I agree with your usage. What I meant by it, though, was that someone at Google had deliberately decide to weight Google Offers e-mails over Groupon e-mails as a way to compete with Groupon. I could certainly be wrong, but I don't think that's what happened.
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No one was forced to use Microsoft but their product was so common...
False. The anti-competitive ruling against Microsoft did not come down because it was merely common, it was handed down for exactly what you incorrectly claim didn't happen.
We were forced to use Microsoft, we are no longer. Remember at the time of the ruling Microsoft was the only product on the desktop anywhere to be seen. It had nearly all of the software market writing software for it (these days we have FOSS software and Mac software a plenty). Linux flat out wasn't an option then. Mac's had zero games, a handful of apps and were usually only found in schools where someone got a great student deal, or the media industry. Windows came pre-loaded on all machines not because it was the popular option, but because Microsoft gave kickbacks / discounts to people who would install it. Compare it to this case. I can bypass Google right now by going to www.bing.com. I can find a replacement for gmail at www.hotmail.com, mail.yahoo.com, and countless others.
These days is I would agree your comment is perfectly right. I can run Linux even OSX on my PC. I can order a PC without Windows pre-installed and quite critically I expect that non-windows machine to run in every way like another PC. Back in the 90s this was definitely not so. Not only the market share, but also the ease of access to alternatives come into consideration when you have a monopoly.
Now on the software, Microsoft bundled the application with the system and refused to let the use remove it. Sure the user could choose not to run internet explorer, and hide the icons, but there was no way to run Windows without IE installed. Contrast that with this scenario here where you expressly need to enable the priority inbox, and separately need to go and sign up to get the daily deals, and on top of everything after you use Groupon once or twice it also starts appearing in the priority inbox putting them both on perfectly equal footing.
There's no way this could be seen as anti-competitive, and the differences between the Microsoft case are immense.
I use it because it has excellent spam filtering and specifically because it has IMAP (and POP3) access - I do use the webmail interface to quickly scan emails on rare occasions, I've not used much in the way of other webmail systems to state whether or not it's more or less clunky than others.
Just be aware that it's not *JUST* webmail access and I suspect a lot of people jumped across to it when Hotmail disabled POP3 access.
If anything, as someone who used to write mail-filtering rules up to about 5 years ago in procmail with my old ISP's mail servers, I kind of miss not having to write them any more.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...if it's free to set up multiple email accounts on Google and if you are that concerned about the priority of "authorised spam" emails (i.e. advertising emails that you have agreed to receive), why not just create two accounts, one for private use and one for subscriptions?
If you weren't using Google then you'd be inundated with a lot more spam than on Gmail because Google's mail filters are so good - and if I have to put up with a bit of prioritised emails of stuff I've subscribed to avoid virtually all spam, then so be it. The fact is, I don't subscribe to all that crap in the first place...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Yes, don't feed Timothy!
If I presented a single screenshot as evidence of anything I would be laughed off the website.
That's a lot of text but you still didn't contradict the previous persons statement. Instead I think you used another definition of the word forced. Your definition is probably closer to something like "it was inconvenient to use something other than Microsoft". Forced is usually defined as physical coercion.
Your assertion that Microsoft was the only product on the desktop is also wrong and even if Microsoft provided the only product available, how is that their fault and not the rest of the market for not providing an alternative? Ultimately why do you assert that you have a right to have a choice between similar products? Usually the free market provides choice but if no one is interested in competing or providing your choice of product then what gives you the right to force them?
Typical slashdot response.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
You mean you buy a new phone and it assumes that you want GMail until you tell it you don't? That's a little bit rude. If I want GMail, I'll ask for it!
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Messages sent only to your address and messages from a source that has sent you many messages in the past get flagged Important automatically.
Before crying "anti-competitive" (which flagging your stuff on a service you provide, isn't), that blogger may want to do some actual investigative work... I'm pretty sure the feature is just working as intended and Google's stuff gets flagged because they know the rules better, not because they put in a line of code that says "IF mail.fromGoogle == TRUE THEN Flag.ThatShitUp"
Then again, investigation takes time and effort and it's much easier to get hits on your site by submitting any " is being evil!" story on Slashdot. It's not like there's fact checking going on before a story gets approved for the front page.
~Syberz
It doesn't and you're absolutely right.
However the basis that one company is the only choice automatically makes them a monopoly and all their actions subject to scrutiny under laws that govern anti-competitive behavior. Mac distributing Safari with it's operating system would have had zero impact compared to Microsoft distributing Internet Explorer at the time due to the nature of the Microsoft monopoly.
A company doesn't need to have the only product on the market, they can have the only viable product. It's like saying Verizon isn't part of an oligopoly because your next-door neighbour is willing to sell you some dial-up access, simply not a viable option, just as 1998 was definitely not the year of Linux on desktop, and Apple was almost pointless for general purpose computing at the time almost looking like the company (with a share price 1/100th of the current price) was on its last legs.
The key part here is what defines a monopoly. Microsoft was in every way a monopoly in the eyes of the law. Google is a monopoly too, but a lot of people don't realise in what field. Google's ONLY monopoly is in advertisement. As a user you have complete freedom to choose competing and viable alternatives to Google search, to Gmail, and to many other Google products, with alternatives providing identical featuresets. As a company seeking advertising you don't have complete freedom, Google has an 88% marketshare for search in my country making alternatives unviable and making Google an advertising provider monopoly here even when you don't take into account Google's wide spread use of Adsense on the rest of the internet.
Gmail is not a monopoly. Windows was. You can't draw comparisons between the two.
Isn't is obvious by now? All of the sudden there is a flood of alarmist articles about google. And practically of it turns out to be BS. We have seen this sort of thing before, and we all know who is behind it.
This is what I figured as well, just like google calculates a high pagerank for itself because its huge and popular, the popularity of google's other services probably lead credence to their coupon thing too. Maybe if groupon also ran a popular search engine, video site and online office productivity suite then their coupons would have been considered "priority" mail too.
No one was forced to use Microsoft but their product was so common that the judge determined that them encouraging customers to use another one of their products was illegal. I guess the call here is determining if Google is a monopoly on the search business.
Strictly speaking, Microsoft didn't get in trouble for "encouraging" - they got in trouble for *assuming* that if you were using Windows, you Obviously wanted Explorer, and then integrated it so you couldn't get rid of it.
Contrast with Google: signing up for one service doesn't automatically sign you up for others (I have Gmail, but not Offers - I don't think I've even heard about it in any detail via Google). It's relatively simple to stop using any (or all) of Google's products at any time.
Now, if Groupon was getting filed under spam, this guy might have a point. If you click "not important" and Google kept putting it in the priority file, they might have a point. If they click "important" on Groupon's mails and they don't promote to priority, they might have a point. But they didn't do any of that.
If I make a deal to stock only Coke products in my grocery store I'd expect a cheaper price from Coke too. Yawn.. you anti-ms trolls are really funny..
You'd be disappointed - Coke generally pays off their folks directly rather than with cheaper prices. (And in universities, they'll put the payoff under NDA so the school's can't compare).
Also, there's a difference between "if you go exclusive with me I'll cut you a deal" and "you'll go exclusive with me or else I'll screw you".
The net as it is now yes. But if ISP's aren't content neutral they could become rent-seeking middle-men which set up those barriers to entry. "Oh you can't pay us anywhere near as much as Google/Micorsoft/Yahoo? Sorry, we will not be guaranteeing the delivery of your traffic at this time."
Well, thus far, Google and similar companies have definitely been opponents of that sort of behavior. But yes, if Google were to sign such agreements with large ISPs that represented the majority of connected users, then you would have a point. Last time I checked, you couldn't investigate someone for what they might do at some future date.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Google recognizes that discomfort and provides tools for you to address it. I suppose some would argue that "opt-in" is a more appropriate model than "opt-out", but at least Google does make it possible -- and easy -- to opt out of all of their tracking.
Thanks for your reply, and good to hear you read these things. I realise it's technically possible for them to opt-out, but we could have a debate about "easy". I suspect it is only techies like us that even know there is something to opt-out from, let alone that if you (and the number of steps is quite impressive) click on the finest-print link at the foot of the page (Privacy), get past the fact that the next page does not include Analytics in the list of products, click on Privacy tools on the left (so you have to know there's a tool), scroll down to the third-from bottom link, and then download a plug--in that has "BETA" in big this-might-make-your-system-unstable letters. Given it's Analytics, perhaps I should ask you -- what's the conversion rate on that process! I'm sorry to say it really does remind me uncannily of Arthur Dent's locked filing cabinet in a disused toilet in a basement with no stairs and a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard"!
I realize a lot of people find it very hard to believe that a corporation really would want to help people to avoid the tracking that is in the corporations best interest, but Google's perspective is that long-term the very best approach is to do the thing that is right for the user.
Actually, that's not what makes me feel uncomfortable at all. I know very well Google is full of nice people because I've met lots of them. And sure enough, given the data Google has, I haven't seen them do anything nefarious with it. But I feel uneasy when society relies on companies "continuing to be nice", rather than putting well-thought out consumer protections in place -- especially when it comes to privacy and competition rules. The cod phrase I tend to use for this reasoning is "SCO was a nice and friendly company once too".