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.
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?
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
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
The Slashdot definition of monopoly seems to be "making more money than I think they should have."
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.
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.
Eh if it is anything like the Tigerdirect and Newegg daily deals I can understand it. I mean you'd have to be nuts NOT to want to pay less than half for stuff you were planning to get anyway. Just the other day I got a Samsung 1Tb Ecodrive for $35 with NO MIR crap. No refurb either. Seriously who can beat that?
So while I don't use the above services if they are anything like the ones I do use I can see why. I've saved myself, my family, and my customers a ton of money by getting these daily emails. it has gotten to the point I have several customers that just leave me cash and say "hey when a deal on that thing I need comes up just snatch it, kay?" which is how 4 of my customers also ended up with those 1Tb drives. Really nice drive BTW, the 32Mb cache makes them pretty damned fast for a 5400RPM drive and the slower speed makes them ultra cool and quiet.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Is slashdot trying to chase away customers by posting more and more troll pieces?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
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'