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Sometime back blog world was abuzz with a news that advertisements have reached google home page. Later on it was discovered that google does not own that domain and the ads are not from google. (The Site is still on and kicking I am surprised that google has not shut them down.)

Now ads have reached Gmail’s home page i.e. home page when you are logged into gmail, just above where it lists all your emails.

As you can see these ads are part of ‘Web Clips’. Gmail gives option to customize the rss feeds you want to see in web clips.

As you can see in the image above

You can remove cetrain RSS feeds
You add your own feeds
you can stop the feeds from showing completely

But there is no option to stop just the adverts. So its all or nothing choice.

Google has been showing context senstive sponsored ads next to the email and related links when mail is being read for quite some time. But this ad has been out of the way not “in your face” kind of ad.

But the webclip even though small is “right in your face” type ad which google has been proud to stay away from. I saw 2 adverts in quick succession. I was not able to reproduce it later on. It just might be that google is experimenting with it. But if is here to stay it shows how desperate google is for finding new source of revenue even if its being little bit evil.

The image above is screenshot of newsletter from searchenginewatch. You can see google has snapped address from the body of the email and created map this page link just above sponsored links.

While we are at sponsored links I have also noticed that sponsored links in Gmail have increased from 3 to 4.