Just another logical step in Google’s brand erosion. After a sufficient erosion has taken place a new CEO will be appointed to “bring back” the old Google. But by then it will be too late.
Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
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Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people like to give you a hard time for using an “old” email address like yahoo, hotmail, or aol.
I'm more likely to give someone a hard time for using email at all. I find it increasingly less useful every year. Currently it's a massive storage of confirmation emails and receipts for me.
But if you look at it as a "unified notification framework with powerful management tools and wide API access" - it's a market-conquering monster.
Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
#13I guess I should have seen this coming. If Google is concerned enough about their bottom line to have layoffs, then presumably they're also looking for low-hanging fruit to (they hope) increase revenue. This reminds me of Microsoft's increased injection of ads into Windows 11. I'm curious if/when market dynamics will limit the extent to which Microsoft/Google do this.
Never gonna happen. If people get so upset that they start moving to other products, then we'll see MSFT and GOOG do what all belligerent companies do when they start losing eyeballs: Increase advertising on the remaining users until they, too, get fed up and leave, and eventually the companies wither and die away. Will that happen? Probably not, but it's more likely than either company realizing they're alienating their users.
Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
#14Only GMail?
YouTube is almost unusable nowadays.
Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
#15Good thing they haven't figured out how to do that in Thunderbird yet...
Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question: why would you expect hate for using Yahoo mail?
A lot of people like to give you a hard time for using an “old” email address like yahoo, hotmail, or aol.
I think you'd be more likely to get a gentle ribbing from your friends in real life than here on HN where there's a general distaste for the web past 2010 anyway
Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
#17I've been so happy moving my email to iCloud. It isn't perfect or anything, but it's nice having email that's just boring IMAP. Apple takes my $1 each month for custom domain support and 50GB of storage and I get their hide-my-email service.
Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
#18The availability of free email services is a wonderful thing. But if email is important to you, it probably shouldn't be in Gmail.
Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
#19"A distinct lack of announcement has so far been evident."
Was this written by AI? No sources, no screenshots.
Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users
#20Google now seems deep into the enshittification [1] process. Of all the big tech companies, they seemed the most customer-friendly, the least constrained by the need to optimize their money hose. But I guess the economic logic of tying executive compensation to short-term share price simply overwhelmed other considerations. The stock must go up, so revenues must grow, so Google must monetize everything to the maximum extent.
There is (or was, anyway) an opportunity for a very long-term play in which Google or similar companies resist the profit urge, make enough money to cover costs and sock away plenty for moonshots and continued development. Focused on optimizing products for users, rather than for revenue, they could have become the Everything platform.
But I guess now it's time to start looking at different email providers.
[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys