I think the problem is that Ars Technica was the first big site to cover it and they did a pretty poor job. The headline was "Gmail blows up e-mail marketing..

I think the problem is that Ars Technica was the first big site to cover it and they did a pretty poor job. The headline was "Gmail blows up e-mail marketing...", which is pure hyperbole and confused a lot of people (myself included) about what was going on. Here's a nice technical blog post from someone who actually knows what they're talking about: emailexpert.org/gmail-breaks-email-marketing-again/