In his Technology Evangelist Blog, Ed Kohler rants about "More About ..." Links in Gmail. He goes into great detail about the evolution of sponsored advertising in search results, and how this feature "underhelms" him. To his credit, he does give credence to the "add to calendar" and "track a package" features that Gmail totes.
The overall problem I have with this post is that he neglects to point out that although the ads may not be exactly what you are looking for (i.e. instead of more information about a topic, it is actually a link to a service like Best Buy), they are still tremendously more relevant than banner ads on AOL Mail or Yahoo! Mail.
I respect that Ed has the right to his opinion, but other posts by him have been far more useful and thought out. One of my favorites was Google Calendar's Gmail and SMS Integration.
Keep it up ...
Thanks for the comments, Gil. I agree that the content found under "More About..." is relevant. I just think that's the wrong label for the content. "More about..." to me means information more than just ads. Something like "Related Ads..." would be a more appropriate label for what Google is really sending people to.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Ed.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading.