Software Marketing Journal

Google launches Gmail

The problems we had with our blogging tool left us a bit behind with developments. It is probably old news to everybody that Google has decided to attack Yahoo! (and MSN) head on by launching a revolutionary mail service that is bound to stir the mail waters a bit.

Gmail is - allegedly - already under beta testing and will bring a free 1GB mail account to all subscribers. The mechanism behind gmail will be the google engine so that users can search for their mails and retrieve the whole list of mails associated with each one. Google believes that this is a change of mind in web mail status. For the first time users will never need to delete their mails but will use the powerful Google engine to manipulate them and find exactly what they are looking for. Nice going for a free service...

Of course there is no such thing as a free lunch. Users will have to sacrifice a bit of their privacy in the gods of Google, since the mails will be 'scanned' by the Google contextual advertsing robot (Adsense) and 'related' contextual ads will be served next to the account. There have been quite a few voices of concern raised about this 'scanning' and about how far this will go - now and in the future - but in spite of the Google re-assurances it is a rather frightening issue which we will need to keep our eyes open for.

Of course the implications for marketers is that the contextual ads impressions will start exponentially increasing with the launch of the service. Naturally this will also mean an increase in the clicks and the marketing expenses for the Adsense campaigns. Whether this will mean an increase in ROI is something that marketers will need to study for their campaigns.

Posted by Harry at April 4, 2004 11:47 PM