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Forget new services, even a small change in their existing products by Google can destroy lot of companies. Everyone remembers how they ruined email marketing b

by akshayB 11y ago

Forget new services, even a small change in their existing products by Google can destroy lot of companies. Everyone remembers how they ruined email marketing by caching gmail images.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
While this is a great example of monopoly done right and I'm very happy they did so, it is also a lesson about being too dependent on third party solutions.
andybak 11y ago
It was arguably a net-win for user privacy. Admittedly - it doesn't hurt Google to weaken other marketing channels but it's disingenuous to frame it this way without also pointing out that it's a lot more user-friendly than 'images in this email are blocked. click to enable'.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Similarly to https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/, every change breaks someone's business model.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gohrt 11y ago
caching images prevents knowing the open rate; it doesn't prevent knowing the response rate on click actions. If people are reading your emails but not clicking, how is that valuable?
- duderific 11y ago
  It's also valuable to know the open rate. If people aren't opening your email, maybe it means your email subject line isn't "zingy" enough. At least you could A/B test with different subject lines and see if it changed the open rate.
- bpicolo 11y ago
  one annoying as crap thing is that it prevents images from working against my dev vpn
lacker 11y ago
There are still plenty of successful email marketing companies.
mdasen 11y ago
From what I know, it's still possible to track Gmail opens and the change Google made in fact made it easier by making image loading default to on. When you open an email with images, Google will proxy the request for the tracking image and then cache it. If each user has a unique tracking image, you know when it was opened. Google is not caching the images before the open so you do know that it was opened. What you possibly lose is repeat opens which might end up with the cached image. That seems like a loss, but with this change, Google turned on images by default. So you get loads of Gmail users loading images by default rather than the old way where many more people would be loading your message with images off. MailChimp has a little write-up about it: https://blog.mailchimp.com/how-gmails-image-caching-affects-open-tracking/ https://blog.mailchimp.com/how-gmails-image-caching-affects-... tl;dr: Google's change didn't stop marketers from knowing you opened the email, but did potentially block cookie sending, IP address information, referrer information, etc.
voltagex_ 11y ago
Even a change in the pricing of say, the Google Places API (previously part of Maps, now billed differently) can cause drastic effects. I wonder if anyone at Google realise how much power they wield.

by akshayB 11y ago

Forget new services, even a small change in their existing products by Google can destroy lot of companies. Everyone remembers how they ruined email marketing by caching gmail images.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

While this is a great example of monopoly done right and I'm very happy they did so, it is also a lesson about being too dependent on third party solutions.

andybak 11y ago

It was arguably a net-win for user privacy. Admittedly - it doesn't hurt Google to weaken other marketing channels but it's disingenuous to frame it this way without also pointing out that it's a lot more user-friendly than 'images in this email are blocked. click to enable'.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Similarly to https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/, every change breaks someone's business model.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

gohrt 11y ago

caching images prevents knowing the open rate; it doesn't prevent knowing the response rate on click actions. If people are reading your emails but not clicking, how is that valuable?

duderific 11y ago
It's also valuable to know the open rate. If people aren't opening your email, maybe it means your email subject line isn't "zingy" enough. At least you could A/B test with different subject lines and see if it changed the open rate.
bpicolo 11y ago
one annoying as crap thing is that it prevents images from working against my dev vpn

lacker 11y ago

There are still plenty of successful email marketing companies.

mdasen 11y ago

From what I know, it's still possible to track Gmail opens and the change Google made in fact made it easier by making image loading default to on. When you open an email with images, Google will proxy the request for the tracking image and then cache it. If each user has a unique tracking image, you know when it was opened. Google is not caching the images before the open so you do know that it was opened. What you possibly lose is repeat opens which might end up with the cached image. That seems like a loss, but with this change, Google turned on images by default. So you get loads of Gmail users loading images by default rather than the old way where many more people would be loading your message with images off. MailChimp has a little write-up about it: https://blog.mailchimp.com/how-gmails-image-caching-affects-open-tracking/ https://blog.mailchimp.com/how-gmails-image-caching-affects-... tl;dr: Google's change didn't stop marketers from knowing you opened the email, but did potentially block cookie sending, IP address information, referrer information, etc.

voltagex_ 11y ago

Even a change in the pricing of say, the Google Places API (previously part of Maps, now billed differently) can cause drastic effects. I wonder if anyone at Google realise how much power they wield.