markoff on gmail

According to John Markoff in the Times, GMail's supposed to launch tomorrow. Anyone without inside info willing to make a bet on whether Google will deliver personalized ads based on the content of the messages users are reading?

Comments

[lhl]

Would be a fool to bet against it.

United States Patent Application: 0040059712 Serving advertisements using information associated with e-mail

[Tom]

As of 11:37pm EST gmail is listed as coming soon.

[michael]

Betting is officially closed:

8. Are there ads in Gmail?

There are no pop-ups or banner ads in Gmail. Gmail does include relevant text ads that are similar to the ads appearing on the right side of Google search results pages. The matching of ads to content is a completely automated process performed by computers using the same technology that powers the Google AdSense program. This technology already places targeted ads on thousands of sites across the web by quickly analyzing the content of pages and determining which ads are most relevant to them. No humans read your email to target the ads, and no email content or other personally identifiable information is ever provided to advertisers.

[Ronan]

Check the date on the press release. This is almost defiantly an April fools joke.

[michael]

Almost defiantly?

I have a hard time believing that Google would pull this as an April Fool's prank, given (a) the business opportunity that exists for them in the email space, (b) the obvious applicability of their technology (both search and ad delivery) to the email problem, and (c) the business context that they're in vis-a-vis the pending public offering. This is /not/ the time for them to be messing with their message. (Pun fully intended.)

If this /is/ a prank, then it's a foolish one. And not in a good way.

[pb]

It's real. Just a clever introduction to maximize buzz. Props to Google.

[jazz]

gmail