Gmail's Second Major Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#21

Post by bradleyland » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:35 PM UTC

psynix wrote: post #11

Your problem is that you're relying on a method of communication that was never guaranteed to be instantaneous. Maybe you should investigate other forms of communication within your team besides (or in conjunction) with email.

Exactly what I was thinking. SMTP is generally store and forward. Your message gets thrown in a bin and the MTA gets to it when it can. I can't find anything in the actual SMTP RFC [1] indicating that there are limits to how long an email can stay in queue.

Google processes a lot of email. The primary constraint limiting how long their MTA backlogs can be is customer satisfaction. Most SMTP servers I've worked on are happy to retry for 72 hours or more.

1: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#22

Post by kaolinite » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:35 PM UTC

I'd say the #1 problem is spam filtering, which for me has gotten worse and worse. Recently I have had PayPal payment notifications going into spam! It's a shame because Gmail used to have incredibly good spam filtering - good enough that I didn't check it, as I knew I could trust it - however now I don't trust it at all.

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#23

Post by icelancer » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:35 PM UTC

alxndr wrote: post #9

I had seen massive delays in delivery to Gmail when sending newsletters at my last $dayjob, and I had always assumed it was part of their spam filtering. For example, if it were me and I was getting thousands of nearly-identical emails sent to Gmail addresses, it seems like a good idea to let 1% of them through to see if end users mark them as spam or not. If they all get marked as spam, I don't need to let the rest…

Likewise. I used a script to recurse over a long list of names, and putting in a small sleep() delay in-between emails ended up fixing the problem immediately.

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#24

Post by kapilkale » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:40 PM UTC

psynix wrote: post #11

Your problem is that you're relying on a method of communication that was never guaranteed to be instantaneous. Maybe you should investigate other forms of communication within your team besides (or in conjunction) with email.

Sure, but email is still the preferred form of external communication with customers and clients.

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#25

Post by kapilkale » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:40 PM UTC

hnolable wrote: post #19

Are you hitting any of their receiving limits? http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1... Because this is exactly what happens when you do.

Not even close.

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#26

Post by buster » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:41 PM UTC

Whaaat, SMTP != Instant Delivery!? You must be joking!

As much as i can understand the pain of an email not being delivered after 2 hours this seems to be too much drama. "happens 2 times in a month" is not a "major problem" for a free service especially since i suppose this user is part of a rather small minority. I never noticed substantial delivery lags myself over the past years myself.

Anyway, if you say "i'd pay 50$/month" please email me, i'll be happy to provide you with a very overprized mail account with same-second delivery! :)

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#27

Post by jmillikin » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:41 PM UTC

plg wrote: post #3

i wish some major computer company would release an easy-to-use plug and play server product that would enable consumers to run their own mail servers on cheap hardware, just by toggling a switch just imagine... no ads, no privacy concerns, complete control. if they were smart they would include some sort of automatic backup program that runs in the background and saves everything every once in a while, a backup that…

What would happen if I'm on vacation and my apartment loses power, or my ISP-provided DSL modem locks up, or my cat chews on the server's ethernet cable?

If the answer is "you might not receive some email", then that is not an acceptable alternative to hosted email.

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#28

Post by buster » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:44 PM UTC

kapilkale wrote: post #24

psynix wrote: post #11

Your problem is that you're relying on a method of communication that was never guaranteed to be instantaneous. Maybe you should investigate other forms of communication within your team besides (or in conjunction) with email.

Sure, but email is still the preferred form of external communication with customers and clients.

Doesn't change the fact that this preferred form of communication by no means guarantees delivery in a certain timeframe. It's not a google problem. The email can be "stuck" in every place between you and the recipients mailbox.

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#29

Post by derfniw » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:49 PM UTC

psynix wrote: post #11

Your problem is that you're relying on a method of communication that was never guaranteed to be instantaneous. Maybe you should investigate other forms of communication within your team besides (or in conjunction) with email.

100% agreed.

I try to treat email as any other letter I recieve(1). Meaning that the sender can only expect an instant reply if I know beforehand the mail is coming and urgent. The same way one would rapidly reply to an urgent letter one is expecting, but easily take a day or more to reply to, or even open, a non urgent letter.

If you need to get a hold of someone directly you should use your phone (to call them). If they don't pick up their phone, leave a voicemail or send an sms.

(1) Registration confirmations / new password emails are an obvious exception here.

Re: Gmail's Second Major Problem

#30

Post by neya » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 8:50 PM UTC

The author is furious about a technology that was not designed for instantaneous delivery (SMTP) and fumes about it, because it isn't instantaneous. What's worse is, he quickly assumes goes into some kind of 'super-hero mode' and makes a pretty heavy claim that this is Gmail's second biggest problem.

I think this is the best approach - If someone hands over you a free glass of wine, which they've tried their level best to make it perfect, you just drink it instead of trying to suddenly become a food critic and blame the person who gave you the beer. If you don't like it, don't drink it. Buy your own beer from somewhere else. As simple as that!

Tell you what, you should try Yahoo!, I bet.