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Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#41

Post by codeflo »

slg wrote: post #34
trevyn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same image. Try again. :)

Yeah, I am not sure where the original claim is coming from. It isn't that hard for Google to simply follow the links and compare the files as part of the caching process. So unless marketers start customizing the images in addition to the links, there isn't any reason why Google can't cache the images together. And even if marketers do start customizing images, hasn't Google gotten pretty good at comparing very simi…

Once they followed the links, the tracking has already happened. Any deduplication after that only helps to reduce Google's storage costs.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#42

Post by eggnet »

trevyn wrote: post #28
codeflo wrote: post #12

> E-mail marketers will no longer be able to get any information from images—they will see a single request from Google, which will then be used to send the image out to all Gmail users. Unless you click on a link, marketers will have no idea the e-mail has been seen. Absurdly wrong, marketers already use a unique image URL for each email recipient, and Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same im…

> Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same image. Try again. :)

How could they know prior to fetching the image? Sure, after fetching they could determine it but that is too late for privacy.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#43

Post by MichaelGG »

solox3 wrote: post #35
trevyn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same image. Try again. :)

Do you know more about this? Are they, say, MD5ing images that are served, or can this be circumvented by changing a pixel for each request?

Even if they hashed every image returned, they'd have still made the request.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#44

Post by codeflo »

surrealize wrote: post #39
codeflo wrote: post #12

> E-mail marketers will no longer be able to get any information from images—they will see a single request from Google, which will then be used to send the image out to all Gmail users. Unless you click on a link, marketers will have no idea the e-mail has been seen. Absurdly wrong, marketers already use a unique image URL for each email recipient, and Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same im…

Google could retrieve and cache a random sample of the images and hash them. Then they could note which image links go to the same images. And they could identify image links by noting that a bunch of emails have the same structure except for one image link that's different for every recipient. So I think they actually could take a pretty good stab a deduping images with unique tracking URLs. It might not be perfect,…

Easy: Make the "Dear " part of the email an image. Boom, deduplication fooled.

(Also, they don't currently seem to do anything like you're suggesting.)

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#45

Post by momokatte »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #16

So instead of my work mailing lists having accurate stats via ye olde tracking pixel, now only google does, which they will sell to their own chosen marketers and clients paying google's rate. This isn't the privacy and common-sense win you think it is.

Your work mailing lists only have accurate stats if all of the recipients currently enable loading of images by default.

I don't think you're being sincere in your concern.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#46

Post by taeric »

slg wrote: post #34
trevyn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same image. Try again. :)

Yeah, I am not sure where the original claim is coming from. It isn't that hard for Google to simply follow the links and compare the files as part of the caching process. So unless marketers start customizing the images in addition to the links, there isn't any reason why Google can't cache the images together. And even if marketers do start customizing images, hasn't Google gotten pretty good at comparing very simi…

I believe the claim was more of "there is no way for google to know those all point to the same image without following the link."

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#47

Post by untog »

slg wrote: post #34
trevyn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same image. Try again. :)

Yeah, I am not sure where the original claim is coming from. It isn't that hard for Google to simply follow the links and compare the files as part of the caching process. So unless marketers start customizing the images in addition to the links, there isn't any reason why Google can't cache the images together. And even if marketers do start customizing images, hasn't Google gotten pretty good at comparing very simi…

hasn't Google gotten pretty good at comparing very similar files?

Sure, but they'd have to download the file first. At which point the tracking has succeeded.

Re: Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers

#49

Post by repsilat »

bo1024 wrote: post #13
Pxtl wrote: post #7

Seems pretty trivial for marketers to work around by making each image request a unique URL per-recipient. Assuming Google's proxy fetches the image when the user opens the email, you could use that technique to find out when a user reads the sent mail. You wouldn't get the IP address like you would with conventional bugging, but you could still find out how many users read the mail and what time they did so.

Mmm, it sounds like Google might deduplicate the images....

Dedup on image data has no bearing on the information advertisers can collect. On image URLs it will cause advertisers to append query strings to image paths. Google can't win that particular arms race, but grabbing the images on email receipt instead of on email viewing neutralises any gains from that win.

One point nobody has raised yet, though, is that there could be valid use-cases for the sneaky stuff people were doing before. Images generated on the server that reflect current (updated or updating) info could be handy. It might even be worth serving different images to different clients based on user-agent strings. I'm skeptical on both counts, though.

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