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Advertising Google

Gmail Is Starting To Show Ads In the Middle of the Inbox (9to5google.com) 65

Posted by BeauHD from the ads-make-the-world-go-round dept.
Gmail is starting to show more ads on mobile devices and the web. "Starting on mobile, we've observed that Google is now showing ads within your inbox's 'Updates' filter," reports 9to5Google. "That automatic filter is designed to capture emails regarding orders, select promotions, billing statements, and more. Now, Gmail is starting to show two ads at the top of the 'Updates' tab, just like it does on the other tabs." From the report: Beyond that, it also appears that Gmail is starting to mix its ads on desktop throughout the list of emails under Gmail tabs -- they're at least not showing in the main inbox. Dozens of reports on Twitter show the change just in the past two days, though we haven't been able to replicate it in our own inbox. Some users also report seeing more ads in general, instead of the two that Google would typically show.

There doesn't appear to be any new setting to change the placement of ads in the inbox lists, and it's not even clear if this is a change that Google is rolling out to all users. In any case, though, the overwhelming opinion seems to be negative regarding the change -- which is fully understandable.
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Gmail Is Starting To Show Ads In the Middle of the Inbox More

Gmail Is Starting To Show Ads In the Middle of the Inbox

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  • Shocking development (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bjoast ( 1310293 ) on Friday May 05, 2023 @06:48PM (#63500613)
    Free software provided by advertisement company contains advertisements. If you don't want ads in your email, how about paying for email instead? It's dirt cheap.
    • Are you suggesting that the thousands (or is it millions?) of Android users that only have a gmail account because they have an Android phone should just give Google more money outright instead? So, the options are either they get more intrusive ads or they pay more? If you are suggesting they dump Google and use a third party then do you also realize they lose access to maps, the app store, and any other Google services if they do that? Either way, Google is getting their money if you want to continue usin

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Free software provided by advertisement company contains advertisements. If you don't want ads in your email, how about paying for email instead?

      I've used Gmail as my main e-mail for a few years. I use a real e-mail client over POP3. No ads.

      If you're seeing ads in your e-mail the problem isn't Google. The problem is you're a retard.

    • Re:Shocking development (Score:4, Interesting)

      by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Friday May 05, 2023 @07:27PM (#63500703)

      I'm paying for a domain (including email) and I love it. However, gmail is useful in some legacy applications when you have to talk to a clerk and they ask for an email which you have to spell. If it's not one of the usual free offers they know (gmail, hotmail...) they won't spell it right or look weird at you.

      Once I complained to the electric company I stopped receiving the monthly invoice. The clerk said probably because my email was "an old one I was not checking anymore", asked for a gmail address.

      So here am I, regenerating an OAUTH token every week so I can use getmail6 to fetch my messages from gmail with POP3 and read them with mutt. At least, no ads.

      • Just login to your gmail once, and configure it forward all email to your real address. No ads there either.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

          Thanks, didn't realise you could do that.

          I use GMail mostly as the Googledump (Youtube notifies and the like, tho that ended a while back), but would be handier if I didn't have to do keep-alive on the website.

          At least "Basic HTML" version is still available.

          Tho in the past couple years, spam there has skyrocketed.

      • I'm paying for a domain (including email) and I love it. However, gmail is useful in some legacy applications when you have to talk to a clerk and they ask for an email which you have to spell. If it's not one of the usual free offers they know (gmail, hotmail...) they won't spell it right or look weird at you.

        Once I complained to the electric company I stopped receiving the monthly invoice. The clerk said probably because my email was "an old one I was not checking anymore", asked for a gmail address.

        So here am I, regenerating an OAUTH token every week so I can use getmail6 to fetch my messages from gmail with POP3 and read them with mutt. At least, no ads.

        I saw something similar to this recently when I attempted to sign up for a streaming service. They demanded an e-mail address but rejected mine, saying that I had to have an address on a familiar service such as gmail or hotmail. It appears that some people are trying to convert e-mail from a protocol into a platform.

        I have a throwaway gmail address that only receives spam. Apparently I am not the only person who uses it, since I have occasionally gotten e-mail intended for other people who share my name

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      how about paying for email instead?

      OK. How about Google charges 5 cents per e-mail sent? I'd be far more likely to take GMail seriously than if it was one of 50 million messages sent out by a Nigerian prince.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by BinBoy ( 164798 )

      It's a start but you also have to stop SENDING to gmail so they can't suck up all your juicy ad targeting info. That's the hard part.

  • It's right on schedule (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Friday May 05, 2023 @07:01PM (#63500625)
    It's part of the tech lifecycle: https://kottke.org/23/01/the-enshittification-lifecycle-of-online-platforms
    • But part of the problem is all this tech is free, we don't pay anything for it and so google can monetize at our expense.
      • Yeah, but they don't have to make it a crappy experience they were making money with two ads they don't have to make money with five ads but we are already locked in they could put 20 ads on the page and we would still use it because we have to
  • if this also applies to paid business users.

  • so is it time to go back to ... (Score:3)

    by znrt ( 2424692 ) on Friday May 05, 2023 @07:11PM (#63500645)

    ... good old email clients yet? or are they fucking up pop/imap too?

    • Re:so is it time to go back to ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday May 05, 2023 @07:19PM (#63500667)
      They make it very difficult with frequent issues. I'm still using Thunderbird but there are days when I have to switch to GMail's web browser app. It's a real pain because Thunderbird's search functions work so much better than the world's leading search engine provider.

      • I use Apple Mail to read my work Gmail. The only "issue" I see is that, occasionally, email seems to hit the web interface a minute or two ahead of when I can get it via IMAP - that's not the end of the world though.

        • As a long-time user, the one big issue I run into is that on occasion, Gmail won't deliver the body of an email over IMAP. It will pretend the body is empty, even though it's clearly visible if you use the web interface. It's something about that specific email that happens server-side, regardless of the client used.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I find the opposite is true. One if the reasons I moved to web from Thunderbird is that Thunderbird's search is rubbish in comparison.

        I had a look at their new mobile version recently, and it's no better. Fine for reading and replying, but search makes you work to find what you want in a very large mailbox.

    • thunderbird in IMAP works fine with gmail. If you use CLI tools it's more annoying, see https://shallowsky.com/blog/te... [shallowsky.com] / https://github.com/getmail6/ge... [github.com]

      I'm not sure if people really left classical clients. I think many Microsoft users go with Outlook. (It can have to do with the Microsoft web access being miserable.)

  • If everyone migrated to IPv6, everyone could have a static IP... and everyone could run their own mail server, Mastodon instance, file storage, and VOIP solution (or at least VOIP-to-VOIP, you're still going to pay for interfacing with the old system). Hell, throw in a standard home automation / security setup.

    Imagine your monthly fee is your ISP bill and the electric bill for a small appliance that runs those services... the required software is already out there, free for personal use. It's not like the

    • and everyone could run their own mail server Do you realize why that's a terrible idea or are you just being facetious? Hard to tell so I apologize if I don't see the sarcastic bit of what you're saying.

      • Thank you for taking the time to post that completely pointless drivel. I can only hope while you were doing that, some other person was spared an interaction with you.

    • Re:I wish it was better (Score:5, Insightful)

      by inglorion_on_the_net ( 1965514 ) on Friday May 05, 2023 @08:00PM (#63500771) Homepage

      This has basically been killed by poor computer security.

      Running any software yourself means you have the not inconsiderable burden of keeping up with security updates (or not, but that has its own cost).

      Email is insecure at the protocol level and has been completely overrun by spam (in part because of the poor security). Over time, we have accumulated a variety of kludges to help improve email security a bit, but they mostly just add more complexity, while the insecure underpinnings are left in place.

      The result is that running your own email server, you have to keep the software up to date, you have to somehow filter out the single-digit percentage of real email from the deluge of spam. You also have to jump through all the hoops to implement the variety of security kludges that have been built around email, or else various large providers will not accept your emails. Even when you do everything right, some email will still be blocked, or even go missing without anybody being able to tell you what happened to it.

      There was a time when I ran my own mail server and I even wrote one of the early Bayesian spam filters. No more. The effort just isn't worth it on such a small scale. These days, I pay a company to take care of it for me. I've been a happy customer for more years than I can remember.

      • Re:I wish it was better (Score:5, Informative)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday May 05, 2023 @09:34PM (#63501007)

        I was posting the other day that SMTP needs to add a pull option over HELO / ELHO. It would solve the spam problem overnight - at least bot nets and forged senders, anyway. UCE would always be a problem, and people signing up for things they later decide they don't want... but they'd be a LOT easier to filter out.

        FYI - I run Mail in a Box, it's dead simple, and hasn't required any active maintenance from me since I installed it. I like knowing that my mail is on my server in my home, and neither Microsoft nor Bing can claim ownership over the contents of it or mine it for whatever purpose.

      • you have to somehow filter out the single-digit percentage of real email from the deluge of spam

        Or you can do the opposite and just block all incoming email to your account unless they are on your whitelist. This will filter out all of the spam, and allow in only the real email you want. This is basically why chat clients don't get plagued with spam, you have to be added as a friend before a random person can send you messages. The problem with email is by default it is open to talk to everyone and accept email from everyone. This is similar to SMS, which is also getting plagued by spam, but not as ba

    • Sorry friend, I don't want you probing my ports!

      • If you have an Internet connection, it's probably getting hit with a LOT of port probes on an ongoing basis.

        Back when I ran my own Exchange server, the logs were always full of attempts to log in as root / admin / administrator / postmaster. Maybe that's subsided a bit since there are a lot fewer insecure-default installs out there now, but bots are cheap and a lucky find is still valuable.

        I honestly don't even check any longer. I'm unlikely to be targeted by elite hackers, and my server updates itself c

  • It's absolute shit on the mobile app, like 1 in 10 is an ad.

  • I (still) use Thunderbird and use POP (not IMAP) to handle email on my home desktop and only use Gmail on Android to (a) review mail when I'm away and (b) clean out the online sent/trash folders. I don't keep any email in the online Gmail account. Can't even remember the last time I logged into Gmail from the desktop, though I have to change online settings and filters.

  • Anyone who still sees ads these days, deserves them. There's all kind of ad lockers, sponsor blockers, etc. if one cannot be bothered using them, they shouldn't complain about ads. It sucks users have to do that, but that's how it is. In any case, even if an ad was shown, I'd never click on it! If fewer idiots clicked on ads, perhaps they would go away?

  • I mean we have it at work and with a normal client it's at least semi-usable... just like any e-mail provider.

    However its spam filter is highly broken. Important mail lands in Spam, just because it doesn't come from one of the large mail servers, and spam gets through, just because it's going over one of the larger spam companies.

    • Re:I wonder why people even use Gmail?

      Because my ISP, with which I use an email client, requires that I have an alternative address (for emergencies I suppose) and Gmail was quick and easy to set up, with forwarding to my normal address.

      I very rarely look at my Gmail directly, but did so just now because of this topic. I saw no ads in my Gmail inbox; and what's that about an "Updates" filter? If I want an update I just hit refresh.
  • I've had a paid email account for 29 years. The small company is becoming unreliable so I want to switch to another paid service. But I'd really I'd prefer SMTP/POP3 access and it be a US-based company/servers. Does such an animal exist?
    • Yes they exist, but are becoming much more rare because most people just go with the big two, which in the end hurts these type of providers. One I can suggest that has reliable IMAP and POP services, and even supports features you don't find anywhere else such as 2FA for IMAP and POP is Imageway. You can find more information about them here if you're interested: https://www.imageway.com/ [imageway.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        Thank you, that looks interesting and it seems they do have SMTP access. Do you know whether they provide separate email or do I have to own a domain name first? Their BBS access [imageway.com] tickles my nostalgia bone.
        • Yes they have SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 access, plus they don't charge per email account like a lot of the high quality providers do. You need to have your own domain name which the email hosting is attached to. They make the migration easy, you just point your domain to their email hosting systems, and when you login it will pull your email off the old server. Of course if you're using POP and downloading all the email to your email client and then deleting it off the server, then you don't need to worry about

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rotting ( 7243 )

      I like https://proton.me/mail [proton.me] but I use the web interface for mail access. They do have a "bridge" application that you have to run locally that you connect your mail application to if you prefer using that. The last time I used it, it was pretty bad, but apparently it is quite a bit better now. You can make a free account to try it out at least.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        Thank you. I've heard of them; I thought they were foreign.
        • Yes they are a foreign company based in Switzerland. Additionally they don't support POP3, which you said you prefer.

          When it comes to the free account, it doesn't support using an email client via IMAP/SMTP, so you must use their paid proton unlimited account for that. Additionally, the proton unlimited account limits you to 15 email address, and 3 custom email domains.

          The proton bridge application is a pain and can cause issues with email clients. Now in days most transmission of email uses SSL which
  • Not seeing any of this. Maybe because I turn off the multiple inboxes thing?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Additionally, it is giving more power to these corporate monopolies to control email however they want. The more and more people centralize on the corporate monopoly email providers, the more it is killing the federated nature of email services (SMTP) and giving them more power to move away from the open standard RFCs. It feels like the only two protocols left that have not been pushed away for proprietary protocols (such as what happened with chat protocols such as XMPP) is HTTP and SMTP. It feels like SMT
  • The whole world is turning into one big ad...
  • You either pop3/IMAP or you dont.

  • Non issue since uBlock blocks them

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