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Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)
- jnorthrop 17y agoThe ads help pay for the service. If they are that intrusive choose something else.
- Semiapies 17y agoSome people get a lame thrill off of making sure that someone else doesn't get money.
- omouse 17y agoI use Thunderbird to check my GMail. Am I freeloader now too?
- Semiapies 17y agoGoogle makes using Thunderbird for your Gmail possible. If they had a check-off box that said "Show No Ads", there'd be nothing wrong with checking it. However, that's a wholly different thing than going to lengths to disable the very unobtrusive ads shown in exchange for using the web client.
- _pius 17y agoWell, yes. :)
- diN0bot 17y agothis is an interesting ethics question. if you never click on ads, then why not disable them?
- mtoledo 17y agoBecause you can't know that you'll never ever click on the ads for sure. The ads change, and people change too.
- yummyfajitas 17y agoGoogle ads are actually very good. I admit I've clicked on a couple of them: Want a job programming OCaml? Faster than FFTW
- lucumo 17y agoNot all ads are paid-per-click, some are paid-per-view. And even for those that are paid-per-click you can often get into better ad programs if you have more ad views.
- tortilla 17y agoI just don't understand this. I hardly ever see the ads and when I do, they don't bother me. Why take such extreme measures? If the ads bother someone that much, why not use a different service or pay for one? Seems to me the cure is worse than the disease.
- DenisM 17y agoIt's still a clever hack. Some hacks are beautiful, even if not "profitable".
- mbrubeck 17y agoTo me the hack is not about wanting to hide the ads, it's about revealing the details of Google's decision and algorithm to hide ads on "tragic" emails. (I especially love the fact that you need one tragic word for every 167 non-tragic words.)
- Semiapies 17y agoGoogle says they try to avoid serving ads beside tragic emails. So...they put tragic phrases in emails to avoid ads. The threshold for the terms "clever" and "hack" must have dropped.
- foulmouthboy 17y agoThe thing that bothers me most is that Google's obviously trying to be sensitive in not displaying ads to people who might be in mourning and this "hack" exploits that. It's like hitting on women at a funeral.
- tilly 17y ago"It's like hitting on women at a funeral." Am I the only person who was reminded of Ryan O'Neil? (For those who don't know, he accidentally hit on his own daughter at his SO's funeral not long ago.) But back to the point, I agree that exploiting Google's desire to be sensitive is tacky.
- helium 17y agoUhm....ever heard of Adblock Plus?
- mziulu 17y agoI had the same thought, but this strikes me as a pretty clever "hack" nevertheless: it exploits a functionality of the service to circumvent the service itself.
- sgoranson 17y agoOn a related topic: what do people think about ad blocking technology from an ethical viewpoint? For me, I think I use the same screwy morality that I use when I'm downloading music...I don't mind stealing from wildly successful artists/businesses, but I'll gladly pay full price for a CD or click on an ad for someone who's just trying to pay the bills.
- aw3c2 17y agoIf the ads are presented in a nice way (no animated flash popups with sound (or any subset)), are for something good and not delivered through a data-mining ad network, I don't mind. Those will often get through my ad blocking filters all by themselves.
- Semiapies 17y agoAds keep the sites I'm looking at funded and available. However, obnoxious ads (flashing, disgusting, NSFW, etc.) are rude, and I will filter them.
- TallGuyShort 17y agoBut the ads only pay if people click on them. I don't click on ads, EVER. I never have, and have never even been close to. Some people do click them, obviously. Since I'm not clicking them, anyway - me using an ad blocker only saves the advertiser bandwidth money.
- zargon 17y agoI have only clicked an ad once in my life. I was searching Amazon but couldn't find anything suitable. Then I noticed they were showing me an ad from a 3rd-party site for exactly what I was looking for. I clicked it, and bought the product. So at this rate, ads help me out about once every 15 years.
- eli 17y agoLots of ads are per-impression not per-click. Really that's the only sensible way to do a brand-building campaign. Anyway, I have no problem clicking ads if they're relevant and for something I really want to learn more about. It's just that they rarely are.
- thuc 17y agoi agree, i don't find the sidebar ads to be obtrusive. i don't even notice them. i do notice the ad above the email contents on occasion and they've been pretty useful to me.
- mrshoe 17y agoI was asked a related question during an interview at Google. As an example, the interviewer told me of a time their ads drew an especially vile reaction: they had placed luggage ads on a news story about a serial killer who chopped up his victims bodies and stuffed them into suitcases. The interviewer said they'd be happy to just not show any ads on such pages and asked me how I'd go about detecting them. Apparently they've (mostly) figured that out by now!
- fretlessjazz 17y agoMod parent up! (slashdot ref).
- teilo 17y agoSeems like a waste of time. Enough people do this, and Google will adjust. It's just cat and mouse from there.
- paul9290 17y agoI ignore them, but the links to interesting stories from sites of my interest I click on them frequently. Ads to a blog post I guess those are what you'd call them?!?
- cstefanovici 17y agoEmbrace the ads people. They pay for all of Google's free services, which these ad-hating people obviously are using. Also, I find that whenever I glance at the GMail ads there's always something interesting or amusing there (more of the latter).
- _pius 17y agoI upvoted this so I'd remember to take a look later. Now I kinda wish I hadn't.
- clay 17y agoA better hack might be to do the tragic words in a different language, like chinese.
- fretlessjazz 17y agoI think most of us are missing the point. The author is not implying that he discovered a "hack" or "secret code", it's that Google consciously chooses to not match advertisements to text such as this. You can rephrase the sentences all you'd like, and Google will still not render ads.
- Torn 17y agoGoogle allows you to turn the ads off.. so why the need for this 'hack'? Go to Settings -> Web Clips and untick 'Show my web clips above the Inbox'.
- chanux 17y agoGood for lifehacker readers. I use Gmail for it's simplicity (even with ads). I won't ever block those non-intrusive text as an honor to the good service. When I 'm satisfied of your service I won't to give back something. Maybe I don't have money, but something I can contribute.
- chanux 17y agoOops s/won\'t/want
- gradschool 17y agoFirst we find out we've been living in a world where most people will give away their privacy freely because they don't think it's worth anything. Then a few large companies finding a way to capitalize on it are not just tolerated but admired. Now one guy treats one of them with the contempt it deserves and is criticized as unethical or ungenerous. WTF?