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Is this how Rapportive works? Because the idea sounds very useful, but do you really want to build a business around altering the appearance of someone else's

by mbreese 16y ago

Is this how Rapportive works? Because the idea sounds very useful, but do you really want to build a business around altering the appearance of someone else's application? Particularly troubling is that they are removing one of the few money making parts of Gmail. If it really starts to catch on, are they in for an arms race with Google? Plus, with this focus, it appears that this company may be left with only one exit strategy: acquisition by Google. Like I said, this sounds quite useful, but I'm not sure that I'd like to get in the middle of it...

mattmanser 16y ago
I must admit I'm totally confused by how they think they'll monetize the business without being a simple talent acquisition without crossing the dangerous line of essentially stealing google's money. Then again, YC signed 'em up on the spot and the guy's past experience is impressive. So we're probably not seeing the whole picture here. I can only imagine the money makers come from further as yet unreleased web apps or features that integrate. Although the dark thought emerges that it'll be selling the client cleaned data that they're gathering. That would be truly low. But I'm encouraged by their privacy policy that this won't happen: http://rapportive.com/privacy http://rapportive.com/privacy
- samstokes 16y ago
  We're going to monetise by building useful tools people want to pay for. We're not yet ready to publicly discuss exactly what those are, but selling data is definitely not it. Thanks for linking to our privacy policy. From that document (under "Sharing with third parties"): > We will never sell, rent or give away private data about you or your contacts. Our business is in making your inbox more powerful, not in selling databases.
sprout 16y ago
How much money does Gmail actually make? Whenever I open up Gmail, I am way too busy to be looking at ads. I'm sure there's a non-zero number of people clicking on ads, but as far as I'm concerned Google is mostly providing free IMAP service with a nice web interface and great uptime.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I figure multiplied by a huge number of users it adds up nicely. And don't forget the spam filtering.
- sandipagr 16y ago
  you think someone visiting Hacker News is their target market? or target market for almost 99%[1] of ads? [1] out of blue :)
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  Not sure how accurate this is... http://seekingalpha.com/article/196953-youtube-much-more-important-than-gmail-for-google http://seekingalpha.com/article/196953-youtube-much-more-imp... "...we estimate that Gmail had revenue per 1,000 page views of 6 cents in 2005 which increased to about 30 cents in 2009."
eitally 16y ago
That's the whole point of Gmail's Contextual Gadgets. For example, we created a gadget that's tied to our homegrown Helpdesk system so recipients of tickets can manipulate them directly within email rather than logging into the Helpdesk app. It wouldn't surprise me if Google nudged Rapportive in the direction of contextual gadgets for this reason, but since GAPE domains already allow disabling of ads it isn't like Rapportive is causing Google any pain & suffering. On the consumer side, like others have said, it's all client side so besides having to deal with Gmail's funkalicious obfuscated js I don't risk see much risk.

by mbreese 16y ago

mattmanser 16y ago

I must admit I'm totally confused by how they think they'll monetize the business without being a simple talent acquisition without crossing the dangerous line of essentially stealing google's money. Then again, YC signed 'em up on the spot and the guy's past experience is impressive. So we're probably not seeing the whole picture here. I can only imagine the money makers come from further as yet unreleased web apps or features that integrate. Although the dark thought emerges that it'll be selling the client cleaned data that they're gathering. That would be truly low. But I'm encouraged by their privacy policy that this won't happen: http://rapportive.com/privacy http://rapportive.com/privacy

samstokes 16y ago
We're going to monetise by building useful tools people want to pay for. We're not yet ready to publicly discuss exactly what those are, but selling data is definitely not it. Thanks for linking to our privacy policy. From that document (under "Sharing with third parties"): > We will never sell, rent or give away private data about you or your contacts. Our business is in making your inbox more powerful, not in selling databases.

sprout 16y ago

How much money does Gmail actually make? Whenever I open up Gmail, I am way too busy to be looking at ads. I'm sure there's a non-zero number of people clicking on ads, but as far as I'm concerned Google is mostly providing free IMAP service with a nice web interface and great uptime.

jacquesm 16y ago
I figure multiplied by a huge number of users it adds up nicely. And don't forget the spam filtering.
sandipagr 16y ago
you think someone visiting Hacker News is their target market? or target market for almost 99%[1] of ads? [1] out of blue :)
chopsueyar 16y ago
Not sure how accurate this is... http://seekingalpha.com/article/196953-youtube-much-more-important-than-gmail-for-google http://seekingalpha.com/article/196953-youtube-much-more-imp... "...we estimate that Gmail had revenue per 1,000 page views of 6 cents in 2005 which increased to about 30 cents in 2009."

eitally 16y ago

That's the whole point of Gmail's Contextual Gadgets. For example, we created a gadget that's tied to our homegrown Helpdesk system so recipients of tickets can manipulate them directly within email rather than logging into the Helpdesk app. It wouldn't surprise me if Google nudged Rapportive in the direction of contextual gadgets for this reason, but since GAPE domains already allow disabling of ads it isn't like Rapportive is causing Google any pain & suffering. On the consumer side, like others have said, it's all client side so besides having to deal with Gmail's funkalicious obfuscated js I don't risk see much risk.