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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

#221

Post by roothog »

yamtaddle wrote: post #111
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #18

The availability of free email services is a wonderful thing. But if email is important to you, it probably shouldn't be in Gmail.

In the US, it's pretty ridiculous that the USPS isn't doing email yet. Free account with some strict limits (especially on per-day sending) for all residents, paid options available, support at post office locations and partner libraries. It's nigh-necessary for communicating with government and participating in the economy—USPS ought to do email.

The USPS is a terrible spam blocker.

Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users

#222

Post by projektfu »

MAGZine wrote: post #59

Google's products do seem to be getting progressively shittier, in profound and confusing ways. take their home assistant, which used to be able to find information online and compose an answer to your natural langauges queries. Now she just says "I don't know, but I found this online..." Google Search seems to be getting truly terrible. Results completely unrelated to what I'm looking for are placing in the first pa…

When I used iPhone up until this year, I also felt like the flaws were as though nobody uses iPhones at Apple, which is obviously not the case. However, there is a lot of brainwashing going on telling people that something that is bad is actually good.

Whenever Apple locks people into one of their properties, people say, "ooh, smart move". Maybe it is, but it's shitty. Siri couldn't turn my lights off, for example, and Google and Alexa have no trouble with that.

Google "full screen mode Safari iPad" for another highly confusing design decision. In portrait mode, Safari of course fills up the screen with chrome. iOS is full of these annoying little features that are WONTFIX.

Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users

#223

Post by skippyboxedhero »

crazygringo wrote: post #206
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That example has no relation at all to the topic. You seem to think that they are mutually exclusive or that "only" (in the part you have quoted) refers to something it does not. Just read what I said again. It is reality, I worked in equity research specializing in consumer products so am reasonably familiar with the space. Consumers just see the product, but the economics are about a lot more. The actual product is…

I read your comment very clearly, and you're speaking in absolutes like "nothing else matters", "only ever cut back on things like product", "no-one tries to start a new mayonnaise company". And these absolutes simply aren't true. And sure nobody starts a mayo company but Hellman's is absolutely competing in the same product category with relatively newer entrants such as e.g. Amazon Brand, or Whole Foods 365 brand,…

I am not speaking in absolutes. I typed out specifically a section just for you to tell you that I am not speaking in absolutes. As I said, the reason you think this is because you didn't read what I am saying carefully enough.

I won't bother replying or reading this for obvious reasons. Good luck.

Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users

#224

Post by 6510 »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #142
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #20

Google 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…

Their financial model is similar to a TV or newspaper. Imagine you create a newspaper, you start out showing no ads, lots of people buy it, it is all good. Then you raise money from investors to grow, and they start asking for more revenue. So you add one advertisement. Then the investors want out, so you have to IPO...more ads. Then you have to keep the share price up because execs want options, and your HR consulta…

And the end game [for the newspaper] is to get rid of articles, puzzles, cartoons, letters from readers, get rid of subscriptions and go 100% advertisement. It is entirely possible for google to go there. Search being free is really half way there already.

Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users

#225

Post by metters »

nologic01 wrote: post #25

Have people tried/documented gmail to proton migrations? There is a forwarding functionality that could reduce the migration pain but you never know what kind of can of worms you might get into.

Don’t know what users here think about posting links to one’s own site, but I’ll risk it. I migrated from gmail to proton, and wrote down the steps and experience. [1]

Should be the same for tutanota or others, don’t know about migration script (easy switch) of others, though. For me it worked without any hiccups.

[1] https://blog.metters.dev/posts/leaving-gmail-behind/

Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users

#226

Post by 6510 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #217
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their financial model is similar to a TV or newspaper. Imagine you create a newspaper, you start out showing no ads, lots of people buy it, it is all good. Then you raise money from investors to grow, and they start asking for more revenue. So you add one advertisement. Then the investors want out, so you have to IPO...more ads. Then you have to keep the share price up because execs want options, and your HR consulta…

>Most of their growth has been increasing ads per page Hasn't most of their growth come from a growing number of internet users?

If the user has no money his eye balls aren't worth much.

Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users

#227

Post by skippyboxedhero »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #211
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would me knowing it matter? So shareholders are paying for the exec, and they are paying for the consultant who is doing the exec's job? If you work as an exec at MCD, working this out is the kind of thing that you should know. It is the reason why you are being paid money to be there.

The exec does know how to work it out: You hire a consultant to give you an answer. The job of the executive isn't to know the answer to every question. Their job is to make sure questions get answered. There are an infinite number of ways you can do this and hiring a consultant is a valid option.

As I said, the job is not to know the answer to the question but to work out how. If you are hiring someone from the outside, you are outsourcing basic functions.

If his job is as simple as hiring consultants, why do you need to pay someone $1m+/year to hire a consultant. Just hire a guy on $10k/year who tells you to hire a consultant.

It isn't a valid option. This is one of the reasons why most corporations are poorly managed (right now, I would guess that there are maybe 10 CEOs of US listed companies who will go down as great CEOs...that is being optimistic, almost every CEO is paid like they are a star). Their "thinking" is outsourced to someone hiring a bunch of grads with no experience, that is what consultants are...it is like advertising, churn and burn grads.

A key part of making better decisions is taking those decisions yourself and learning from the outcomes. But the way things happen now, all of the experience is gone and it is just a revolving treadmill of people who move through jobs too quickly to ever see the result of what they did or take responsibility for it. Hiring consultants is an indication that the company lacks executives with the capacity to perform their function correctly (unfortunately, this is the case at most companies now).

Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users

#228

Post by yamtaddle »

roothog wrote: post #221
yamtaddle wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it's pretty ridiculous that the USPS isn't doing email yet. Free account with some strict limits (especially on per-day sending) for all residents, paid options available, support at post office locations and partner libraries. It's nigh-necessary for communicating with government and participating in the economy—USPS ought to do email.

The USPS is a terrible spam blocker.

Oh, definitely, but it'd at least (ideally, though not necessarily) make it easy to filter for messages from e.g. official government accounts or real individuals something like that. I wouldn't expect any spam blocking from them, really, but rather an easy way to isolate the important messages. Which is like spam blocking, but in reverse, and is something they could be uniquely positioned to do very effectively.

Then again, they allow mail that fraudulently tries to appear "official" or important when it's just an ad (and sometimes an outright scam!) so all that would have to be legislated to ensure it happens, I suppose. Would love to see "mail system reform" on a party platform, but I guess that doesn't get the voters out.

Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users

#229

Post by skippyboxedhero »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #196
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I asked the question facetiously...I worked in equity research for consumer products companies, and you see this (alarmingly) at good and bad companies. "We did X, it went very badly...don't worry, we have fired the consultant who was responsible"...the question you want to ask (but cannot) is then: why I am paying the salary for the monkey, not the organ-grinder? The worst part is that I have seen this at compa…

The sarcasm did not come through, my apologies!

It wasn't sarcasm, it was just being humorous...and, indeed, I have replies saying how ridiculous it is to expect executives to be able to run a company. The sarcasm wouldn't have been detected because the reality is that this kind of thinking has become embedded in US corporate culture: reward with no responsibility.

Re: Google appears to be scaling up the ads it shows to Gmail users

#230

Post by skippyboxedhero »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #217
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their financial model is similar to a TV or newspaper. Imagine you create a newspaper, you start out showing no ads, lots of people buy it, it is all good. Then you raise money from investors to grow, and they start asking for more revenue. So you add one advertisement. Then the investors want out, so you have to IPO...more ads. Then you have to keep the share price up because execs want options, and your HR consulta…

>Most of their growth has been increasing ads per page Hasn't most of their growth come from a growing number of internet users?

Yes, that is correct. The assumption in the example is that users are flattish, and you need to "do something" to get marginal growth.

In the early days, you saw very real pricing growth (due to better targeting) and volume growth due to user growth. Over the last ten years or so, I believe that a lot of the growth has been greater ad density, and ad density is much more important for controlling financial results...which is the key point when it comes to exec behaviour. Execs can't turn on user growth, they can add more ads to a product if they see numbers coming in light.

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