AMP for email is a terrible idea • Hacker News Board

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#141

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:25 AM UTC

Because they didn't internalize the feedback from Wave well enough I guess. /s

I agree with the article, email is email. But it points out something which is fundamentally a problem for the industry. Some software is done as in doesn't need to change any more.

That is a scary place since all those Gmail engineers need to do something so if it isn't adding new things to Gmail what will they do?

Interesting parallel in open source, Linux especially, when you have a subsystem that works well and is well understood by lots of people. Nothing to fix right? Well that would be boring. So we get things like systemd replacing the init subsystem and we get the unholy love child of netware and windows 'net' command replacing networking infrastructure management. Did they need changing? No, the previous systems did just fine. But what else is there to do?

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#142

Post by geofft » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:25 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #100

geofft wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? The fact that Google produced AMP played a nontrivial part in me rejecting their job offer - I didn't want my work to be judged by the engineering standards of an organization that continues to staff and promote AMP.

Consider me seriously impressed by that stance.

I mean, other reasons included things like "they wouldn't match the competing offer" so it definitely wasn't just a principled stand :-) But even that aside, this was just a decision from self-interest, not a statement of protest: the sorts of engineering work I find interesting/engaging tend to involve doing the right thing for the users even if it involves more / longer work. I don't think that prioritizing getting the work done and shipped is objectively wrong, I just worry about what would happen if perf season rolls around and my current project is incomplete because I didn't want to take the expedient route.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#143

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:31 AM UTC

bdhess wrote: post #48

tejasmanohar wrote: post #27

AMP is, to begin with, Google exerting its market power to extend its control over others’ content. Facebook is doing it, so Google has to. As a consumer, I actually love AMP. Everytime I click a news link on mobile and am taken to AMP, I'm relieved to be free from the extremely distracting original websites. Google has done a lot of exciting work on open standards like JSON-LD [0] and Microdata [1] to bring a better…

We have the exact opposite opinion then. I moved to DuckDuckGo on iOS because I thought the AMP formatted Google search results were so user-hostile. Maybe they’ve fixed the bizarre scrolling and overly sensitive links by now, but I see no reason to find out, because I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

[deleted]

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#144

Post by feniv » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:33 AM UTC

Besides the ideological issues, is the HTML tag for AMP emails seriously going to be (html lightning-emoji4email)?

I wish they implemented this as a separate MIME type so emails could specify multi-part messages with text/plain, text/html and a text/amp (just for gmail).

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#145

Post by stan_rogers » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:35 AM UTC

dr1ggins wrote: post #74

ShroudedNight wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly certain that Lotus Notes is deserving of at least as much scorn for its mail rendering as Outlook.

I had to do client work once that required Lotus Notes support and I swear that program runs HTML through a blender before trying to render it. It makes Outlook look like Chromium.

Notes doesn't do HTML at all, at least not in the client. (The webmail client, running in the browser, does use HTML.) It uses a rich text format, and has to translate HTML to the nearest Notes rich text equivalent.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#146

Post by alooPotato » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:37 AM UTC

pwinnski wrote: post #26

alooPotato wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

If I cared about users primarily, I would hope I wouldn't jump ahead to "amp for email is good." Your requisites for this thought exercise are too broad. If Google wants to improve email, I would start by emphatically recognizing why their previous attempt to supplant it with Wave failed, and stop trying to break email's openness,

That was part of my hypothetical, that you actually believe amp for email is good.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#147

Post by alooPotato » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:37 AM UTC

randomString1 wrote: post #94

alooPotato wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that no one has a specific answer for the simple "what would you do to launch this if you worked at Google?" really says something.

I wouldn't "launch this" because it's not needed in the first place. You should accept email for what it is. The same point the article is defending. > and was actually trying to make stuff better for users Now, if we're talking about making communication between users better than yeah you need to go beyond email. E2E, open protocol, something like jmap (imap sucks), focus on privacy and interoperability, yada yada,…

That was part of my hypothetical, that you actually believe amp for email is good for users.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#148

Post by shostack » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:38 AM UTC

david-cako wrote: post #119

gerdesj wrote: post #29

Thank goodness that a bunch of clever kids are going to replace boring old SMTP n MTAs n MUAs and stuff with this bollocks: https://www.ampproject.org/ 8) email works and doesn't need fixing. It (nearly) transports more messages every day than is countable and just works. SNR - now that needs fixing and a good start would be enforcing plain text.

Email “works” but it’s ass for consistently displaying anything more than text. Marketers want to make money, and right now stuffing emails with images in favor of proper layout is the only easy way to do it. Of course google also wants all of your email googling its way through their servers.

As a marketer my fear is Google sees what FB is doing to monetize the feed format and it is moving to turn email into the next algorithmically controlled feed it can turn into a dynamic auction.

There is already a Gmail placement for AdWords ok the GDN. However for the most part, if I as a marketer send emails to my customers, I can be more or less certain they will get delivered if my deliverability is high.

What I see Google doing here is gradually exerting control until they tell brands "hey, you know those messages you used to send to customers for basically free? Now you need to pay a dynamic price we control in order to get any "organic" reach."

And just like that they will have turned one of the most valuable, scalable and cost effective marketing channels into another large revenue stream for themselves that gives them even more leverage over marketers.

Kinds of genius when you think about it.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#149

Post by shostack » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:40 AM UTC

xivzgrev wrote: post #76

I, for one, welcome our new AMP overlords. As a marketer emails are really limited. This opens up possibility of higher engagement and less friction for what you want Gmail customers to do. I work for a loan company - get a rate quote IN YOUR EMAIL! Customer saves time and I just cut 2 steps out of our funnel. The required coding and browser compatibility scare me a bit though. Nothing to piss off consumers than an e…

As a fellow marketer, how will you feel if email, an incredibly high performing and cost effective (essentially free) channel, turns into a auction where you have to pay a dynamic price to get any reach similar to FB?

My fear is this is where this is heading.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#150

Post by alooPotato » Wed, Feb 14, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

IntronExon wrote: post #92

alooPotato wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that no one has a specific answer for the simple "what would you do to launch this if you worked at Google?" really says something.

Your hypothetical element of being pro-user makes it hard, because it requires a great deal of fantasy to support.

The point I was trying to get at with the hypothetical is that its quite possible that a lot of Googlers are good people with good intentions and that they are trying to do good.

The hypothetical tries to demonstrate that if Googlers are good, they would behave in a way that is indistinguishable from the behaviour you are seeing and attributing to evil.

Basically I find it very hard to believe that Googlers wake up in the morning and think how best they can screw over the internet to make a few more bucks for not themselves, but the company they work for. Maybe I'm an optimist.