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AMP for email is a terrible idea

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Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#431

Post by akamaozu »

robteix wrote: post #293
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 love Gmail's UI but years ago I realized that I couldn't trust my online identity to a single entity. What I did was to sign up for Fastmail with my own custom domain and forward stuff to my @gmail.com address. This way I continue using Gmail but with my own domain. I could do this with GSuite (and in fact I did for a couple of years) but GSuite accounts often have limitations compared to regular Gmail accounts and…

What kinds of limitations?

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#432

Post by codazoda »

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.

There are still UX problems on Android too. I tend to open links in a new window and then close the one I'm looking at when I'm done with it. This experience is totally broken with Amp pages in mobile Chrome. Uhg.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#433

Post by scrollaway »

akamaozu wrote: post #431
robteix wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Gmail's UI but years ago I realized that I couldn't trust my online identity to a single entity. What I did was to sign up for Fastmail with my own custom domain and forward stuff to my @gmail.com address. This way I continue using Gmail but with my own domain. I could do this with GSuite (and in fact I did for a couple of years) but GSuite accounts often have limitations compared to regular Gmail accounts and…

What kinds of limitations?

I'm assuming robteix is referring to various features which are first pushed to regular Google accounts before GSuite accounts.

Google has been a lot better about this lately, but it still happens.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#434

Post by bluGill »

mrtksn wrote: post #258
xuki wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? Yes, forward them to your new email, preferably using your own domain name. Start giving out your new email to people, reply to your gmail email from your new email. It takes time but after a few years you can ditch the gmail completely.

That is not entirely true though, is it? The forwarded e-mails won't become non-Gmail over time and I will still be dependant on Google to forward the e-mails to me.

Somewhat. You have to remember to notice and tell everybody who sends to the gmail address to change. Some mail programs make this easy for your friends some do not. Over a few years people update their address book, and eventually almost nothing goes to gmail anymore.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#435

Post by mankash666 »

tarsinge wrote: post #243
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…

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

Nice try, but there's no logic to choosing restrictive technologies under the guise of the manufacturer not being a monopoly (which is debatable if the segment under consideration is "phones greater than $500").

Shooting heroin is a choice, but it isn't wise, just as choosing to institute the manufacturer as an app gatekeeper, nay UNIVERSAL overlord of the hardware, software, services & content - something unprecedented in history.

And you're making me defend Google though I do not want to, but for accuracy's sake, they are neither a monopoly in email nor are they forcing other providers to choose AMP within their email. Just download all your Gmail data via IMAP and siphon it off to Apple's email client/server. And pray hard that Apple will CHOOSE to let you read emails tjhat weren't originally received/sent via their server/hardware/asshole

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#436

Post by beagle3 »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #335
beagle3 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure gmail meets the legal definition of a monopoly, but 3 months ago, gmail started to randomly mark some of my emails “spam”, and it has caused me non trivial financial damage, as it turns out about 90% of the people I correspond with are using google’s mail servers, whether @gmail.com or through g-suite. Feels as monopolish as any other monopoly i’ve seen in technology.

People can still run their own email server if they want, and it will work just fine, and receive and deliver mail to other mail servers. A monopoly situation would have some kind of limits enforced, correct? I have dealt with spam issues with Gmail and solved them all. I send HTML formatted email to many Gmail accounts. I suspect you have not setup SPF, DKIM or are blacklisted on spam lists. Or if you've done all th…

> A monopoly situation would have some kind of limits enforced, correct?

No. A monopoly simply means market domination. It can arise naturally, as has been the case for Google in search in the past.

Microsoft had a monopoly on operating systems without "enforced limits".

The specific legal tests often require e.g. "over 80% of relevant market" by some measures - and I'm not sure Google mail qualifies as a monopoly under this definition.

p.s. having a monopoly isn't even illegal - abusing a monopoly position is. It feels to me that Google is, in many ways, abusing its dominant, perhaps monopoly, position in mail handling.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#437

Post by RobertRoberts »

username223 wrote: post #374
RobertRoberts wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can still run their own email server if they want, and it will work just fine, and receive and deliver mail to other mail servers. A monopoly situation would have some kind of limits enforced, correct? I have dealt with spam issues with Gmail and solved them all. I send HTML formatted email to many Gmail accounts. I suspect you have not setup SPF, DKIM or are blacklisted on spam lists. Or if you've done all th…

> People can still run their own email server if they want, and it will work just fine,... > I suspect you have not setup SPF, DKIM or are blacklisted on spam lists. Or if you've done all this, possibly the formats for your emails is suspect. In what sense is this "work[ing] just fine?" "Sorry, we threw away your mail for some random reason, and we won't tell you about it" seems like poor service.

>"Sorry, we threw away your mail for some random reason, and we won't tell you about it" seems like poor service.

I did testing and found it was not random. Also, maybe my experience running SpamAssassin in the past helped me. Look up how SpamAssassin filters emails and it may help you with your problem.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#438

Post by RobertRoberts »

kuschku wrote: post #347
RobertRoberts wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would tend to agree, but not their email. That's easily replaced.

Is it? Can you simply avoid emailing GMail users and continue? Not really. And yet, thanks to their broken spam filters, you may have to.

>Can you simply avoid emailing GMail users and continue?

No, but you can learn their rules and abide by them. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I tested for why my emails were not delivered, found out the problem areas and fixed them. And now they are delivered.

I have more issues with companies that run their own mail server or use smaller email companies that have overly aggressive spam filters and don't even know what a white list is. I have less issues with Gmail than them.

Try making your emails text only, and get them to deliver. Google even provides guidelines on how to get email to be delivered. I suspect you have not found these rules yet (lmgtfy.com) or have competing interests that forbid you from following them.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#439

Post by epistasis »

kyrra wrote: post #371
ComputerGuru wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not really. Most UX issues with AMP on Safari rather stem from the approach Google has taken with the html. For instance, it’s not a WebKit bug that tapping the top of the screen on an AMP page does not scroll to top - something that works on virtually all other webpages.

The tapping top of screen hasn't been fixed, as it likely is hard to do. As for other work on scrolling: Person contracted to fix some webkit issues: http://frederic-wang.fr/amp-and-igalia-working-together-to-i... HN discussion made some news about scrolling changes made due to AMP's bug reports: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/22/scrolling-changes-comin...

>The tapping top of screen hasn't been fixed, as it likely is hard to do.

Plain HTML+CSS is hard to do?

Google has gone to an exceptional effort to make things not work like they do by default. That it's even more effort to now get basic UX back shows just how misguided the entire team is.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#440

Post by shostack »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #170
shostack wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does AMP have to do with your fear?

I see AMP as a stepping stone towards building a walled garden for the web. There's a lot of benefits, but definitely a loss of control and leverage for marketers in some ways.

My concern is that as Gmail diverges away from the rest of the email world, if a significant percentage of a business's users still use Gmail, they lose direct ownership of that relationship. The tabs were just the first step. I see AMP as potentially the second.

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