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A comment on Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead. Parent comment

Re:Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead by realityking on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @12:36PM (#23630188)
> Advertising in (consumer) gmail came long after paid gsuite

This is clearly false. The screenshots in this Time article show gmail having advertising from day one.

https://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/

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Re:Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead by techsupporter on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @01:19PM (#23630898)
Completely accurate. The ads were even touted as somewhat of a feature. Something along the lines of "Gmail has ads, just like the other services, but our ads will be relevant to your interests."
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Re:Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead by Spooky23 on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @03:47PM (#23632980)
It’s accurate and inaccurate. Ads were there but many users saw none for a long time.

IMO ads were a distraction to enable the data harvesting, which drove Adsense targeting. Even today, the ads I see on GMail are pretty low quality. Some lovelorn guy used my email address unintentionally to sign up for a 55+ dating site 3 years ago. The most targeted ads I get are for similar sites.

Of course YMMV.

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Re:Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead by lozenge on Friday June 26, 2020 @04:31AM (#23649910)
They actually stopped targeting by email contents a while back https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email...
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Re:Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead by thegagne on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @07:00PM (#23634847)
My early adopter google apps account is still free and has no ads.
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