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AMP for email is a terrible idea

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Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#11

Post by taeric »

marcell wrote: post #7

Good luck! I had the "pleasure" of working on HTML emails a few months back. It was unbelievably painful. Getting even a simple email to display consistently across a dozen different mail clients is a huge pain. This is why so many marketing emails use giant images for everything--it's the simples way to get consistent rendering. I predict whatever Google launches will work in GMail, and GMail only.

I further predict it will work in GMail and Inbox differently from each other. Which is just mind boggling. Why!?

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#12

Post by devindotcom »

guessmyname wrote: post #4

Devin Coldewey against a bunch of Google employees, who will win? (sarcasm) On a more serious note, if the idea of AMP is so bad as many people attest. How is that the "bad idea" passed over so many people at a company that praises itself of hiring some of the most smartest people in the field? Hyperbole, the author of this article is just generalizing. Maybe AMP for email works for some people, making it a good idea…

me

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#13

Post by FridgeSeal »

" “modernize” email, allowing “engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences.” "

Whenever a service or company purports to make something "engaging" and "interactive" you just know that useability and actual, tangible usefulness are going to go out the window in favour of marketer-driven choices.

We don't 'engage more' with your software/service because you changed everything to optimise for engagement and time spent, we engaged more because it took more time/steps to get the same thing done.

Arguably what we should be doing is optimising for less time spent on an app/service for the purposes of enabling a better/more efficient/more enjoyable experience by letting users get what they want to do done quickly and easily.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#14

Post by alooPotato »

tibbetts wrote: post #3
mankash666 wrote: post #2

Just a Luddite rant on love of a pedestrian standard. Without even trying out Google's offering, the author goes off on a preconceived notion. I welcome Google's attempt at this - let the free market decide it's success

Free market? Is that what we call it when one member of the duopoly controlling most email clients decides to embrace and extend the standard? Also even if you believe in Santa Claus and free markets, people getting on their soapbox to say “this is a terrible idea” is part of the free market.

just a hypothetical, but if you were to assume that Google had no ill will here and was actually trying to make stuff better for users - what do you think the best way would be for people working at Google to do this?

I.e. say you worked on the gmail team, you really cared about users, you thought amp for email would be good for users, how would you go about making this happen in the world?

genuinely curious if its even possible for Google try and improve things without having some of the downsides you mentioned.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#16

Post by khm »

vkou wrote: post #6
tomc1985 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market as influenced by a commercial entity intentionally making most other options unusable. Yeah, the free market is a good metric there...

It can be argued that e-mail spam made most self-hosted e-mail unusable.

That argument is not compelling, given the number of people and organizations that self-host email.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#17

Post by tyingq »

Ugh. Hopefully unlike the serp results, nobody feels like they have to cave in here due to the carrot/stick Google wields in search.

If they do wield a similar influence because of the market share of Gmail, hopefully somebody challenges that under antitrust or some other consumer protection basis. Email doesn't need walled gardens. That's back to the AOL days. "You've got AMP mail!"

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#18

Post by bastawhiz »

I don't know the technical details of what Google is planning, but if they build something that eases the pain of building cross platform HTML emails, that's a welcome innovation in my opinion. Building emails that "work" even just okay is a ridiculously hard task. Every company I've been at has made some attempt with mediocre results at best (oh, you're using _Outlook_?).

I'm not holding my breath for something good to come out of this, though. This could just as easily be a terribly executed product. But I'll try to be an optimist, because what we have now is outright trash.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#19

Post by celim307 »

As heresey as it might be to HN I can't wait until everyone in the world onboards onto one unified communication platform. Once (and if) lte and unlimited data becomes ubiquitous I look forward to be able to make phone calls, email, messages, video messaging, blogging etc all from one username and account. I want to hand someone my username and be done with it. Facebook is trying, but it's execution leaves much to be desired

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#20

Post by CapacitorSet »

Related reading: Against an increasingly user-hostile Web, https://www.neustadt.fr/essays/against-a-user-hostile-web/

>It all comes down a simple but very dangerous shift: the major websites of today's web are not built for the visitor, but as means of using her. Our visitor has become a data point, a customer profile, a potential lead -- a proverbial fly in the spider's web. In the guise of user-centered design, we're building an increasingly user-hostile web.

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