Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techradar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 271 posts

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

#71

Post by Night_Thastus »

This is part of why I chose a paid e-mail service.

1: No ads, ever

2: No reason to sell my data. They already have income, and if users found out they were selling data, they'd quickly bail from it (At least with the service I use, which is aimed more at users with privacy concerns), which would ruin their steady revenue.

3: Actually a reason to IMPROVE the product, because again, users will leave if the competition is better.

Plus, it's not that bad price-wise. I think it comes out to $3 a month for what I do with a yearly sub.

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

#72

Post by twelfthnight »

DerekBickerton wrote: post #64

I liken this to a sesame seed bun manufacturer. After some experimentation, they realize that shaving roughly 10 sesame seeds from each bun means they save one cent every 100 buns. They continue to sell the buns at the normal price and consumers are none the wiser: After all, who's going to notice 10 sesame seeds missing? But the sesame seed bun manufacturer continues the experiment. They continue to remove the seeds…

This is actually a real thing. I worked at a consulting company partnered with McDonald's and they asked if we could help them optimize the number of sesame seeds on their burger buns.

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

#73

Post by fisherjeff »

Spivak wrote: post #46
gruez wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We won't get anything other than this unless Google decides to do a huge round of buybacks and go private. The spice must flow because only growth makes money for the people who actually own Google. And after they go private why do you think they won't care about growth/money?

If you're public you must grow, if you're private you can choose when and how to grow based on what makes sense for the business. The only thing really pushing you is competitors and inflation. There are no shareholders/investors breathing down your neck for returns. When you're private you can actually say, "you know what, I'm content where we are being filthy rich."

You can only comfortably say that if all of your co-investors are on board (or you have none - unlikely in Google’s case) and if you will never need to raise any additional capital for any reason. It’s very difficult to run a modern business, especially in tech, without being beholden to anyone.

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

#74

Post by ambicapter »

jorts wrote: post #7
CoastalCoder wrote: post #5

Earlier 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 would still use hotmail for old-timers cred, but now it's just outlook, sadly.

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

#75

Post by spicyusername »

Mistletoe wrote: post #63
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…

Am I naive to think that when you make $226 million in a year like Pichai that money should stop being your major driving force and that your reputation is more important? Like what else could he buy? But his reputation is taking severe hits. Maybe I just don't understand ultra rich people though. Maybe money is everything.

Yeah, I think compensation is a kind of score that the ruling class competes on.

It's not about whether they are happier, are making the world better, or have enough. It's only about having more at all costs.

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

#76

Post by cout »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #3

I hope I don't get hate for this, but I still use my old Yahoo! email account in parallel and I find the email experience much better than what Gmail has become. Especially the use of tabs yahoo enables and the non-intrusive ads on the side make my productivity and multi tasking way better. To me, the only advantage to Gmail is integration with the Google ecosystem, especially for Android users, but purely for email,…

I started using gmail so I wouldn't have to worry about properly configuring spamassassin any more. I'm sure there are other services that the spam problem as well as gmail, but as long as the friction of using gmail remains lowish, I will continue using it, because of the time it would take me to decide on and switch to an alternative.

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

#77

Post by consp »

vasco wrote: post #60
Spivak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're public you must grow, if you're private you can choose when and how to grow based on what makes sense for the business. The only thing really pushing you is competitors and inflation. There are no shareholders/investors breathing down your neck for returns. When you're private you can actually say, "you know what, I'm content where we are being filthy rich."

But why do you think "investors/shareholders" are bad and private owners, good? Private owners are just 100% owning shareholders, whatever notions you have about one group you should have about the other. You have no guarantee a private owner wouldn't speed up the enshittification process.

> You have no guarantee a private owner wouldn't speed up the enshittification process.

Sure, but as a private company at least you control who who wants to do that and are not bound by the "the price must go up" behavior of the shareholders since you only care about the dividends (this is a oversimplification).

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

#78

Post by elbigbad »

mynameisash wrote: post #69
georgyo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have Google Fi, it's surprising how good support it. Create a request and a real person calls you within 5 minutes to help out. They are actually helpful as well. The best part is you don't go through 15 minutes of robo voice assistance debugging hell.

I have Google Fi, and I like the support, but I also want to call out that being better than the other telcos is a very low bar.

I was a user of Fi for years and I think you’re misstating the premise here. It’s good customer service, not just good in comparison to telcos.

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

#80

Post by archsurface »

DerekBickerton wrote: post #64

I liken this to a sesame seed bun manufacturer. After some experimentation, they realize that shaving roughly 10 sesame seeds from each bun means they save one cent every 100 buns. They continue to sell the buns at the normal price and consumers are none the wiser: After all, who's going to notice 10 sesame seeds missing? But the sesame seed bun manufacturer continues the experiment. They continue to remove the seeds…

Shrinkflation.
Post reply on HN