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AMP for email is a terrible idea

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Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#271

Post by preordained »

verifex wrote: post #178

I can't believe I read through this article and most all of the comments here with no mention of what the hell AMP actually is, so I did a bit of Googling so that someone somewhere won't have to. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages ): They are a competing technology with Facebook's Instant Articles that restricts the page from doing practically anything that isn't p…

Wow...pages that do less crap. We've really come a long ways from our webcrawler, Netscape roots...such progress. And to be clear, not pointing fingers, I'm honestly just astounded that a glorified, fundamentally unchanged monkey patched version of what we started with is where we are at...

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#272

Post by scrollaway »

mrtksn wrote: post #266
scrollaway wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? Yes and no. GMail does support IMAP access (Go here to enable it: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/fwdandpop ). IMAP is a standard that allows you to access an inbox remotely. OTOH, as long as you are using @gmail.com in your address, you are at their mercy. Go to https://www.gandi.net and purchase a domain name, it'll cost you FastM…

I like Gmail a lot, my problem is with the lock-in due to the domain. I don't really want to move to some other service - what I want is the assurance that Google is not going to do something funny with my account or service and unfortunately if they do I will have no recourse. When I got my Gmail account in 2004 Google was this amazing website that will give away free services and their motto was "Don't Be Evil", at…

If you have no issue with Google's services other than wanting the assurance that you can get support and are treated like a paying customer, I recommend GSuite. Although I'll (hypocritically, since I don't use it) still recommend Fastmail anyway since I think GMail needs way more competition. I'll let actual fastmail users convince you there :)

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#273

Post by bryanrasmussen »

mankash666 wrote: post #207

I'll get down voted for saying this, but the HN crowd's hypocrisy is baffling. 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. This is an opportunity for them to extract value from the said channel. If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. 2. Apple is a prime…

I have had a corporate Gmail in the past, and will probably get it again for a new company. is it going to be AMPed?

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#274

Post by ImaCake »

>See, email belongs to a special class. Nobody really likes it

Well, I like email. It does exactly what I need it to do. It doesn't have the pressures of chat or phone calls, and has the versatility to do all kinds of useful things. Best of all, it can't be broken by a single company and a stupid decision.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#275

Post by bryanrasmussen »

wklauss wrote: post #254
Kesty wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not wrong that AMP is a terrible thing in a pretty package. While the idea of having standards for mobile and slow connection might be a noble one, forcing everyone into it by using mobile search results as ransom is an evil practice. Especially since it's a google run, if it was set up as a non profit foundation with people on the board from different major players as a collaborative project then, yes It might…

And I don't disagree with that. I think the view that drives AMP is misguided and self-serving for Google. I do, however, like to come to HN because it tends to be a very civil space in which to share opinions, not a vehicle for attention seekers to spout whatever false equivalences their brain just come up with. As far as I'm concerned everyone here is entitled to their opinion and I have never seen anyone's voice s…

Saying something unpopular in most cases shouldn't get you downvoted, but often "I know I'm going to get down voted but..." also is a lead in to complaints of hypocrisy. It reminds me of a friend that used to start off particularly rude statements by saying "I don't want to be rude but..."

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#276

Post by [deleted] »

nicklaf wrote: post #126

There are a number of threads here which seem to have been downvoted because of the perceived quality of the ideas they contain. However, I always thought that downvoting was meant to be reserved for low quality discussion, rather than disagreement. Has this changed, or was I always wrong?

[deleted]

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#277

Post by therealmarv »

mikeytown2 wrote: post #47
makecheck wrote: post #31

Nothing says “we’re listening to your concerns about AMP” like rolling it out further to interfere with a function that is even less suited for AMP. Also, technology companies have a real problem assigning appropriate value to maintenance tasks that just keep things stable and usable. I’ve had infrastructure responsibilities over the years and the hardest thing about it was that nobody really knows or cares how much…

I'm waiting for AMP chat; I hear it's fast. /s

Slack needs that! haha

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#278

Post by dagurp »

cdubzzz wrote: post #264
madeofpalk wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that's missing here is the email _client_ story. I really like Google's Inbox and there's no amount of money I can pay anyone else for a similar experience.

Honest question: do you think you really like it or are you really used to it? When Google made the move to Inbox, I switched because I wanted to be using their newest interface. Over time I came to absolutely hate it and that drove me away from Gmail. My wife still uses it so I occasionally find myself in the Inbox app on our tablet. Just a few days ago, actually, I read something in her inbox and for the life of me…

I'm someone who definitely dislikes it but I'm too used to it. The automatic categorization is so useful that I feel like I can't be without it.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#279

Post by tlrobinson »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #141

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…

I don't consider email to be "done". It's pretty much my least favorite tool.

The underlying protocols (SMTP and IMAP) are decent, but the clients aren't. It still lacks usable end-to-end encryption found in many modern messaging protocols/apps. Outright spam is mostly solved, but marketing and other notification emails I accidentally or intentionally signed up for consume way too much mental bandwidth, even with supposedly intelligent email clients (at least the ones I've tried)

That said, AMP for email doesn't solve any of those problems either.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#280

Post by r3bl »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #248
tarsinge wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice try but there is no logic between your points 1 and 2 to come to the third. Apple sells hardware and is not a monopoly, so if their customers are happy with their choice then good for them. On the other hand Google is a monopoly, so a lot of people are not ok with them abusing their position to hijack the web (that they already “own”) and email. Edit: typo

Their search products are a monopoly, their email is not. I provide paid email services for my clients, they can use Gmail if they want, or not. But for SEO, it's Google all the way down...

There's nothing stopping end users from using non-Google search engine.

Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo... they're all viable products that you can use to accomplish 90ish% of what Google could find, and maybe even more now that Google strips historical data (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840, from a month ago).

Since you're mentioning SEO, I just checked and 15.8% of searches for my website came from non-Google search engines in the last month (in my case, Yandex and DDG are the most popular ones). Bing is also taking a huge chunk of the traffic thanks to Windows 10 using it in the start menu, whether you like it or not. And while one example isn't viable enough to make general statements, it's clear that alternatives do exist and are used extensively.

It's a product that's superior when compared to its competitors. It's not a monopoly though.

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