Google to End Trial of Political Spam Loophole ⇥ washingtonpost.com

Isaac Stanley-Becker, Washington Post:

Google plans to discontinue a pilot program that allows political campaigns to evade its email spam filters, the latest round in the technology giant’s tussle with the GOP over online fundraising.

The company will let the program sunset at the end of January instead of prolonging it, Google’s lawyers said in a filing on Monday. The filing, in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, asked the court to dismiss a complaint lodged by the Republican National Committee accusing Google of “throttling its email messages because of the RNC’s political affiliation and views.”

To recap: a study found email from Republican candidates was more likely to be marked as spam in brand new email accounts, so Google launched a program to exempt political email from anti-spam measures, which Republicans ignored while continuing to send spam-like emails before suing Google, then the Federal Election Commission found Google’s spam filters had no political bias, and Google is now terminating the trial loophole program. This is silly and embarrassing for everyone involved.