Gmail, We Need to Talk

Schema has the same problems as Microformats where adoption only takes off if the market demands it, or it gains enough momentum that people can't imagine webapps without them.

There are countless other standards this article overlooks which have been implemented very well in recent years in Gmail, so why does it lambast the lack of Schema?

The example presented are the kinds of emails I actively avoid. Perhaps the author is right, and Gmail is not working with them on purpose. If that is the case, it may be because many users are like me, and they tend to not want fancy-looking marketing emails, and just want basic rich-text features.

The Schema initiative - I didn't know it was called that until now - is in the other direction, and I like it. Emails that have valuable information for me, such as airline flights, are presented not in the way those that send it want it to be shown, but in a way that my mail client thinks is best. Frankly, I want sameness in my emails.

I sure would love it if the gmail client supported more modern web stuff. The history of web development has always been a history of the Lowest Common Denominator: I'm held back from doing XYZ because this browser / email client doesn't support it and that represents a big fraction of my users.

It's not just the gmail client, of course; nearly all rich mail renderers are astonishingly baroque and broken (take a look at which engines Outlook uses to render html mail - sometimes it's the msword renderer).

Of course, we could all just agree to send plain text emails with a link to the web page-ified rich version of the email, but that's not satisfying. I work in the borderlands of rich email - I'm not sending advertising stuff, I'm just sending notifications to users, but those notifications look a lot better when they've got some good markup.

I'm sole responsible for acquisition on a startup and I solely (for now) use direct cold email (it is B2B, email sent to public adresses, so it is not spam).

I only use plain text emails. I don't even use email tracking so that hidden pixel doesn't trigger any annoying warning on the email client that ruins the experience.

> While the plain-text emails we created had some formatting capabilities (hyperlinks, tracking pixels, etc.), they were as close to plain-text as we could while maintaining the ability to track opens and clicks for testing purposes.

That sounds like "HTML email with minimal cruft" rather than "plain text" to me.