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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."

5 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?