And this is why
I run my own email server. Lot more control and no dang ads.
Anyone up for ad free email accounts? lol
Google has tweaked how it slots ads into Gmail, so that you need never be short of distractions while reading your email. The world's largest ad broker has done its best to tell Googlemail users that the change is intended to serve its users with adverts that might better meet their needs. But the reality is of course much …
I signed up for a GMail account about two years ago but I only ever access it via HTTP once in a blue moon (when I'm on holiday for example). The rest of the time it's SMTP and POP3 all the way.
Result? No ads at all...
Last I looked (years ago) Winblows came with an email client, so who need to see that ads at all....?
Windows 7 doesn't include an e-mail client. You'll be prompted to download one (from "Windows Live Essentials", though obviously you can get one from wherever you like if you know what you want).
It's not directly relevant to the issue of GMail of course, but is there any other aspect of IT that ElReg readers are proud to profess their ignorance about?
...serious too, then...?
More likely he sounds like me, if indeed there is a similarity. I don't watch the show, not being into cars, or twat tv presenters. I do just about know who May is, these days, and grant he's the only one of the three who doesn't make me want to kick the screen in.
I have a Google Apps Pemier subscription with the adverts TURNED ON!
I actually find them useful, if I'm interested in a topic, google serves up relevant adverts which on many occasions have presented with the information or products I'm looking for, even saved me money by directing me to another site.
As a previous commenter noted, you can run your own mail server. And pay for it. If you want free email, lots of storage, free backups and possibly the best email interface available, you have to allow Google to look at your emails and you have to look at (or not look at) tiny ads.
Also, Google tells us this, not in tiny text in a privacy policy, but in a public posting with a video.
As usual, a bunch of people say "why are you complaining"?
Google has got to the point where it rarely makes life any easier. Googlemail is presumably already turning a massive profit. If Google are increasing profits without improving UX, then it follows that Google are increasing prices (we are paying for Googlemail by our willingness to accept adverts) at no advantage to the user. It's a classic bait-and-switch: get them hooked on something cheap, then start turning the screw.
The cunning part of Google's plan is that the customer doesn't even realise he's paying!
Oh balls, Gall. Gmail ads are eminently easy to ignore, and also provide entertainment occasionally in the form of inappropriate ads based on some Freudian interpretation of one's messages. Googlemail is free. Ads are a fact of life. I don't think a momentary snag on my attention equates to 'payment'. (The sole exception being the Go Compare telly campaign, which is like 1000 Michael Winners assaulting my brain.)
Part of the money we pay companies for products goes on advertising. Clearly they will stop doing that if we stop looking at or clicking on the adverts, but there is a massive and dedicated industry which is focused on convincing companies that it is worthwhile advertising their products. So if you buy a product, you are paying for that product to be advertised to other people, and therefore the media consumed by those people. A "fact of life"? I wonder what other objectionable phenomena could be justified with such a fallacious argument?
Loads, probably. Why don't you have a think?
I rely on advertising for my job, in the end, whether I like it or not. This is the case for many people. It's objectionable, yes, but it's thoroughly integrated, and all the smug ad-blockery posturing in the world won't change that. Sorry.
Ad-blocking (smug or otherwise) can "change that" if everyone does it and if people are vocal in saying they do it. Eventually it will get through to advertisers that they're throwing money away, advertising will dry up, and you'll be left relying on paying customers for your job. Not so horrific a prospect, surely?
Paying subscribers tend to be as rare as hens teeth on Teh Internets, unless you're providing truly unique content which is not available elsewhere. Which more than likely means you're operating in some narrow niche which isn't served by anyone else anyway.
General/tech news sites aren't likely to survive long behind a paywall. Even one as entertaining as the Register. Not when you have 1000 other sites providing the same basic information in some form or other.
On the flipside people who actively block web advertising are really pretty uncommon and I bet half of those wouldn't bother blocking ads at all if the damn things weren't so obnoxious and in your face so much of the time.
I can confidently state I have never clicked on an ad. I've never bought anything just because a big flashing box on my screen tells me to. In fact those boxes scare me, I don't trust them at all. I buy stuff all the time but I do it by shopping around my own trusted sites, not a big random flashy advert.
I have never been in the middle of reading an email and thought "Oh yes, I really do need to buy some fish fingers, must pop out and get some now". Has anyone? If it keeps my free services free then by all means push the adverts but I can't see that they really work.
As for Go Compare.. their advert is having the opposite effect to the one they want, I would actively use any service BUT theirs.