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What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

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Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#211

Post by tankenmate »

andrewguenther wrote: post #184
Dylan16807 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Looking at the other threads I can't quite get a straight answer on XMPP, but it seems to be entirely disabled for the "new communications product called Hangouts" (new??), but this is not just about federation. 2. claudius is very clearly explaining why google SHOULD disable SMTP. Nobody has seriously suggested they would; you might need to recalibrate your satire detector. Also claudius gave several reasons that…

It is not available in Hangouts, but it will continue to be supported "for the foreseeable future" in GTalk.

Except that GTalk is now being deprecated on Android and being replaced with the new version of Hangouts...

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#212

Post by laumars »

npsimons wrote: post #139
Osmium wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my understanding that people often use "plaintext" in contrast to "ciphertext", so it's not unreasonable for someone to read "plaintext" and think "unencrypted".

Except in a discussion such as this one, where we're explicitly talking about Google locking out competitors by replacing plain (ASCII) text protocols with proprietary binary ones.

To be fair, this discussion is a huge tangent about e-mail protocols. So both definitions of plain text could be contextually valid.

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#213

Post by laumars »

marssaxman wrote: post #209
laumars wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see the replacement of SMTP be designed along with a redesign of e-mails themselves as well. I'd like to see the HTML that is supported in e-mails standardised, so there's no more issues about which clients will render what. I'd like to see the failure notices standardised, so that invalid e-mail addresses produce a standard "404-like" response, and so on. The problem isn't so much that we have multip…

I'd like to see it standardized that HTML is not supported in e-mails. Email worked fine before HTML came along and all the good email is still HTML-free... in my experience, only robots use HTML.

While the vast majority of my correspondence is plain text formatted. I do think there's a place for markup. Something that can embed images, provide different formatting styling (bold, italics, underline, colours and perhaps even sizes). It's also nice having an option between serif, sans serif and monospaced typefaces.

Then there's hyperlinks. If not like HTML anchor tags were the hypertext is independent to the destination, but still some method to follow links in e-mails as a lot of online registration requires email activation that way.

So do think there is a benefit for some level of markup in e-mails.

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#214

Post by raylu »

laumars wrote: post #210
npsimons wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see the HTML that is supported in e-mails standardised Count me out. It wasn't even two weeks ago that we had the story here about how The Onion was hacked because somebody clicked on an obfuscated HTML URL in email.

While we're at it, let's all abandon HTML5 and have every browser doing their own thing, because people occasional fall for fake anti-virus ads. We can't stop social engineering like that - it's completely unavoidable. Which is why banks and payment providers regularly tell people not to follow links asking for bank details (etc). Yeah it sucks that The Onion got hacked that way, but your argument is doesn't fix that…

I think he's saying we should instead have text-only e-mail, because that's both standard and has a tiny attack surface.

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#216

Post by saraid216 »

ajross wrote: post #157
claudius wrote: post #2

Everybody knows that SMTP is old, inefficient (hey, it’s nearly plain-text!), insecure, diversified (so many different servers to choose from!) and generally just bad. Clearly a closed web interface that only runs in Chrome would be much better for everyone! Then people could always be sure with whom they communicate, nobody could hack or social-engineer their way into other accounts, and everyone would have to follo…

Arrgh. Title is total link bait. There is no news about SMTP here . The linked blog post is whining about XMPP, which is not being disabled . Apparently the author is a user of "XMPP Federation" (the ability to link XMPP servers together a-la IRC), which is also not being disabled . But apparently it might be someday, as the new Hangouts stuff won't support it. So how did we get form "can't talk to your Hangout via a…

> So how did we get form "can't talk to your Hangout via an XMPP client" to "Google will disable SMTP"? Really folks, this site used to be better about this stuff...

Religion is inevitable. http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#218

Post by saraid216 »

dsr_ wrote: post #40
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep banging on about "plain text, plain text" what is wrong with plain text? And what is wrong with SMTP? Also email attachments can be binary encoded, base64 is just one option. People are free to say that SMTP is "bad" or "broken" but they have to say exactly why that is the case. And "there are multiple different implementations" is a pretty poor justification, as a SMTP replacement would likely have the s…

Multiple implementations are a strength. In fact, you won't see a good replacement for SMTP without multiple independent implementations. (What will it look like? I would guess it will look like a two-part service, with one protocol for servers to talk to each other and another for clients to talk to servers. Servers will send tiny notifications to other servers that mail is available for their subscribers; then the…

How come I didn't see this stuff come up when Google was all, "We are going to replace email with Wave!"

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#219

Post by pyre »

EvilLook wrote: post #56
dsr_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple implementations are a strength. In fact, you won't see a good replacement for SMTP without multiple independent implementations. (What will it look like? I would guess it will look like a two-part service, with one protocol for servers to talk to each other and another for clients to talk to servers. Servers will send tiny notifications to other servers that mail is available for their subscribers; then the…

>What will it look like? I would guess it will look like a two-part service, with one protocol for servers to talk to each other and another for clients to talk to servers. So SMTP and POP3/IMAP? >Servers will send tiny notifications to other servers that mail is available for their subscribers; then the receiving servers will retrieve the mail and cache it or store it for clients. This changes the spam problem funda…

  | So SMTP and POP3/IMAP?
I think that the 'clients to talk to servers' part is referring to sending email, unless you think the webmail is the only way to send email. POP/IMAP are for reading email from the receiving server, not for sending out new emails.

  | So NNTP?
I was under the impression that most Usenet networks used UUCP.

Re: What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

#220

Post by wtbob »

laumars wrote: post #14
claudius wrote: post #2

Everybody knows that SMTP is old, inefficient (hey, it’s nearly plain-text!), insecure, diversified (so many different servers to choose from!) and generally just bad. Clearly a closed web interface that only runs in Chrome would be much better for everyone! Then people could always be sure with whom they communicate, nobody could hack or social-engineer their way into other accounts, and everyone would have to follo…

SMTP is worse than plain text. It's plain text and base64 (which increases file sizes by ~30%). It's a horrid protocol, but sadly it's what we're currently stuck with. But this is all moot as the article is about XMPP, WebDav and RSS. The SMTP headline is nothing more than clickbait.

> But this is all moot as the article is about XMPP, WebDav and RSS. The SMTP headline is nothing more than clickbait.

Not really. SMTP derives most of its utility from federation, and XMPP could have done the same.

Of course, this is nothing new: NNTP was replaced by a million forums, XMPP federation never really took hold, and no doubt someday mail federation will die too.

It's a crying shame, it really is.

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