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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

#251

Post by benihana »

mvanveen wrote: post #194
curveship wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, do I understand you correctly that Google fetched the image even before you requested that images be displayed in the email? That seems like a boon to marketers, not a bane.

The way I read the comment, I think you are correct about it being a boon and not a bane. However, it is because the request was timed at the same time as the message read, not the other way around. It seems the commenter functionally tested an external URL being requested by Gmail, and found that the request was coincident with when the commenter opened the email. This essentially "leaks" that you've opened the emai…

This is correct. This makes unique open counts much more reliable as it guarantees that the tracking image will be fetched. Before this change, one could never be certain how many people actually opened their email in gmail because some percentage of recipients would block images which naturally blocks loading the tracking image. Typically the tracking image is unique to each individual email sent.

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

#252

Post by mnutt »

mnutt wrote: post #226
jrockway wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the servers are in Mountain View?

I set up some servers in the US and Asia and had some images proxied to them through GMail's proxy. The traceroute paths and latencies from the requesting IPs lead me to believe that the servers were in the US, most likely Mountain View. I probably shouldn't have asserted Mountain View, as it's more of an educated guess. Edit: here's a traceroute from Hong Kong to the Google server that made the proxy request. Is the…

Second edit: d'oh, I meant where ever Google's main west coast datacenter is, maybe Oregon? The point being that it appears that all of the traffic goes through a single geographic location.

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

#253

Post by gohrt »

necubi wrote: post #19

There seems to be a lot of misinformation flying around. Here's [0] Google's support doc that clears up some of it. The most important part is at the end: "In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links. As always, Gmail scans every message for suspicious content and if Gmail considers a sender or message potentially suspicious, images won’t be displayed…

It's a delivery receipt, not a read receipt. Delivery receipts already exist, in the sense that Google will tell (non-suspicious) senders if the message is deliverable.

Gmail is pre-fetching the image as part of the message.

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

#254

Post by gohrt »

jfoster wrote: post #174
Dylan16807 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

robots.txt is for crawlers, it would not stop an email client from rendering the email on behalf of its user upon receipt.

So then what gives Google the legal right to fetch, store, and re-serve the images?

If I had to guess, I would guess that sending an email with an image link is a rather obvious declaration of intent to share the image.

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

#255

Post by gohrt »

asdf3 wrote: post #130
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.

Why aren't you asking for read-receipts if that's what's desired? If it's because people wouldn't send them, shouldn't that be their choice?

The vast majority of people don't care at all about read receipts.

Marketers don't care who _isn't_ reading their mail, they care how to send mail that more people will read.

Who subscribes to a direct email campaign (and doesn't unsubscribe, and doesn't flag as spam), and is still offended by the thought of the sender knowing it was read?

Those people can flip the setting back to prompt-to-show-images.

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

#256

Post by raldi »

mnutt wrote: post #252
mnutt wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set up some servers in the US and Asia and had some images proxied to them through GMail's proxy. The traceroute paths and latencies from the requesting IPs lead me to believe that the servers were in the US, most likely Mountain View. I probably shouldn't have asserted Mountain View, as it's more of an educated guess. Edit: here's a traceroute from Hong Kong to the Google server that made the proxy request. Is the…

Second edit: d'oh, I meant where ever Google's main west coast datacenter is, maybe Oregon? The point being that it appears that all of the traffic goes through a single geographic location.

Okay, you've earned a couple upvotes.

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

#257

Post by nikcub »

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…

> and Google has no way to know that all of those point to the same image.

They could do content hash-based caching rather than URL-based caching. It would be more private, as the email senders would have to generate a unique image for each recipient.

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

#258

Post by wingerlang »

paul_f wrote: post #189

In my opinion, Google doesn't care abut the tiny tracking images. It does care about 2M jpegs. So, while email marketers might be up in arms, this won't affect them at all it appears. If anything, they should be thanking Google for reducing their bandwidth.

They'll still have to serve the image to google though.

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

#259

Post by jfoster »

gohrt wrote: post #254
jfoster wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then what gives Google the legal right to fetch, store, and re-serve the images?

If I had to guess, I would guess that sending an email with an image link is a rather obvious declaration of intent to share the image.

Yes, but with who? I think it's a declaration of intent to share with the person specified in the "to:", "cc:" and "bcc:" fields, but not with Google.

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

#260

Post by jfoster »

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…

The behaviour might change in the future, but I think an article in the Gmail help centre has some answers on the initial implementation of this:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?hl=en

"In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links" suggests Google (at least for now) fetches the images upon opening of the email.

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