Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Funny Bug in GMail

Just found out this tiny bug – it looks like the mail search in GMail is conflicting with its own keywords :-)

Go to your GMail account and click on the Spam link on the left. When the contents of the Spam folder appear, look at the content of the search box above: it says in:spam. Apparently, GMail uses in:spam as a keyword to indicate “search for this in the folder named spam“. You can try this out by tiping in:sent mail ticket -  all your sent mail containing ticket pops up. Cool.

Now the bug: type in:spam in the search box and click on Search Mail; you’ll get the content of the Spam folder (we know this). Now do this again – click the Search Mail button again. You’ll get the content of the Spam folder again (duh!), BUT WATCH: notice the ad served to you by Google on the center window’s title…it’s something about spam, most likely a recipe (e.g. “Spam Confetti Pasta – Preparation time 30 minutes“). Apparently Google sees that the search box – or the spam folder – contains spam and serves ads for spam, forgetting that it’s a keyword. It’s kinda like if you searched Google for site:phone.com ticket and Google served ads for phones :-)



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