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Is Google Playing Fair With Groupon, et al?

Posted by timothy on from the maybe-there's-a-perfectly-reasonable-explanation dept.

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."

10 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. so what by acvh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:so what by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You also have to keep in mind there are 2 perspectives here, the perspective of the email user and the perspective of the advertiser. If someone pays to put an ad on Google, they expect Google to place that ad in accordance with whatever contract they signed. If Google is taking their money and then still advertising it's own products over theirs, then that is definitely a conflict of interest.

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      Monstar L
  2. Just a thought by liquidweaver · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    mov ah, 4ch
    int 21h
    1. Re:Just a thought by liquidweaver · · Score: 5, Interesting

      FYI, he is censoring his blog. I asked the same question there, and it's been magically erased.

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      mov ah, 4ch
      int 21h
    2. Re:Just a thought by edumacator · · Score: 5, Interesting

      He also has a grand total of one blog post.

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      An important change for education.
  3. Because you already read messages from Google? by Meshach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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"?

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    "Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
    Aldous Huxley
  4. Re:wow by AlexBirch · · Score: 4, Informative

    or slashdot / blog presenting bad evidence in order to get more views?
    Groupon is still marked as important for my gmail account.

  5. Re:Excellent timing by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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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    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  6. Non-story by exomondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Non-story by sortius_nod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not, looking at where the article is hosted, well, it's the ONLY post on a blog.

      Seems like a bunch of FUD to me. It seems "Kasey Moffat" (I suspect an invented character) created both a blog & twitter account just to do this.

      Alarm bells anyone?