Is Google Playing Fair With Groupon, et al?

An anonymous reader writes with the claim (illustrated with what seems like damning screen-shot evidence) that "Google is using Gmail's priority inbox to give special treatment to its own daily deal emails over all the rest."

wow

[Osgeld]

who would have thought a for profit company would ever try to push its products and services before the competition?

so what

[acvh]

google gives you a free email account, then uses it to market stuff to you. why would anyone be surprised, or upset? there are many free email options out there, use another one if you don't like how this one works.

Re:Excellent timing

[Osgeld]

I dont see how, google is not the only email web client solution on the net and no one is forced to use it (and honestly I dont see the appeal, its clunky IMO)

Just a thought

[liquidweaver]

So, some random blogger posts a screenshot and we implicitly trust it's contents? I could do this with Greasemonkey to GIMP. I am no Google apologist, but my spidey sense it tingling like when I get an email full of "Amazing Pictures" from my grandma.

Re:Excellent timing

[Meshach]

I dont see how, google is not the only email web client solution on the net and no one is forced to use it (and honestly I dont see the appeal, its clunky IMO)

No one was forced to use Microsoft but their product was so common that the judge determined that them encouraging customers to use another one of their products was illegal. I guess the call here is determining if Google is a monopoly on the search business.

Re:Excellent timing

[swillden]

...just in time for an antitrust investigation. Who at Google thought this was a good idea, anyway?

Most likely, no one, because mostly likely no one thought of it at all.

My bet is that this the result of a generic rule that boosts the importance of e-mails from Google, you know so that you're sure to see announcements of new gmail features, or Google account-related messages, etc., but no one thought to make an exception for Offers.

Given that Offers and gmail come from different groups within Google, and I'd expect that no one on the Offers team knows much about how priority inbox is implemented and no one on the gmail team was thinking much about Offers other than to note there was a launch party, I can see exactly how this would happen. Or maybe it is intentional... but I doubt it.

What will happen next is that the Priority Inbox rules will be modified to avoid giving any undue precedence to Google Offers, and lots of slashdotters will believe that Google was being Evil and only stopped when caught, regardless of the facts of the situation.

(Disclaimer: I'm a software engineer at Google, but I don't work on Offers or gmail.)

Non-story

[exomondo]

who would have thought a for profit company would ever try to push its products and services before the competition?

send yourself an email marked with 'high importance' and it ends up in your priority inbox...so google is sending their offer emails with 'high importance' where other companies aren't, how is this a story at all?

Re:Excellent timing

[betterunixthanunix]

You don't have to see how, you just have to pay attention. Google has confirmed that they are facing an antitrust inquiry from the FTC, right now, and I doubt that this sort of behavior is going to look very good.

Re:so what

[antifoidulus]

You also have to keep in mind there are 2 perspectives here, the perspective of the email user and the perspective of the advertiser. If someone pays to put an ad on Google, they expect Google to place that ad in accordance with whatever contract they signed. If Google is taking their money and then still advertising it's own products over theirs, then that is definitely a conflict of interest.

Re:Non-story

[sortius_nod]

It's not, looking at where the article is hosted, well, it's the ONLY post on a blog.

Seems like a bunch of FUD to me. It seems "Kasey Moffat" (I suspect an invented character) created both a blog & twitter account just to do this.

Alarm bells anyone?

Re:Excellent timing

[The Dawn Of Time]

The Slashdot definition of monopoly seems to be "making more money than I think they should have."

Re:Excellent timing

[SuperMog2002]

The antitrust inquiry is for their search product, where they have an overwhelming percent of the market (to the point where Googling is a common verb, even among non-techies). Priority Inbox is a feature of their largely unrelated email product. While Gmail has a nice chunk of the market, it's hardly overwhelming. Hotmail and Yahoo both have nice chunks of market share as well.

Re:Non-story

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how you can tell 5 comments into a story that slashdot is pulling the bullshit wool over everyone's eyes.

Re:Just a thought

[Anarchduke]

Oh no, its a real screen shot. The blogger signed up a new google account with google priority inbox which automatically places messages from google as part of the important stuff. so all the other spamvertisements in the inbox Google doesn't see as important, seeing as how there is no history of that google account ever opening any of those mails.
To sum up
1. new account w/ no history
2. mail from google is considered important by default
3. there are no other email addresses considered important by the algorithm because there is no history on the account.

Result: The google mail is the only email the algorithm treated as important!

Obviously, it must be an act of evil by Google.