> What stopped rapportive from simply inserting their box in the dom in a way that they did not have to remove a revenue driver from the thing they are building

> What stopped rapportive from simply inserting their box in the dom in a way that they did not have to remove a revenue driver from the thing they are building their base on? Oh come on, does anyone miss that box? it was a total waste of space, no one [1] clicked those adverts. > If google would do something like this to a YC company we'd be nailing them to the highest tree. To be honest this is the ~3rd post on Hacker News about Rapportive, and lots of the comments have been pretty negative. I think this is more a case of supporting a startup being innovative (and loved), rather than due to their background being YC. The main rebuttal to your argument is that Rapportive have offered an application in the GMail market place that inserts content where Google wants it to go. They don't replace adverts in the Marketplace version. I think Rapportive simply looked at GMail, thought where redundant space was - which was obviously the adverts - and put value there. Then, Google offered their gadgets stuff and Rapportive offer that as a solution too. We can debate if this was evil or not evil of Rapportive to execute upon till the cows come home, but at the end of the day they've got into YC, they've raised a ton of money, they've delighted users, so who cares whose feathers they ruffle. You're in business, you're at war, you are not a not-for-profit (semi ironic accidental double negative?) peace loving nerd. [1]: Sample size = 1 = me. I never clicked them, they were a joke. Adverts in email is dumb.