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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#231

Post by benou »

mcsb4 wrote: post #215
prlambert wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the PMs for Gmail and hang around HN quite a bit. This is my personal take, not an official reply. It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this. Here are a few: Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem. Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects (unlike FB, messengers, any other comms tool of Gmail's scale). Email itself, of course has a…

> It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this I just happen to have set up an email server and encountered the same problems with Google as described in the article. I own the IP since quite some time, it is not on any black list, reverse DNS is set up etc. but Google rejects email as spam. And this even happens when the gmail account has added the sender in his address book and has send the first email to…

> Use your AI to put email into the spam folder. Refusing it outright is a case for the European Commission which hopefully will slap you another few billions of fine onto the wrist until you remember to play nicely with the other kids.

I prefer getting a bounce than ending in the spam folder by far. Lots of relatives on Gmail never look into the spam folder so I never know if they get to see my email or not and I end up having to ping them on eg. WhatsApp. At least with a bounce, I know they did not get my email.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#232

Post by amenod »

chrismeller wrote: post #226
hitpointdrew wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It was annoying, but didn't feel like it was as big of a deal. Perhaps because email itself wasn't as big of deal back then? Phone calls and snail mail were used with a lot more regularity back then.

Heh. I’ll be honest, that sounds a lot like a millennial projecting onto all the old people in this thread. Sure there’s an element of truth to it, but email was insanely popular before the iPhone too...

He he, this. E-mail rised in the 90s and was hugely popular very soon, because it brought real benefits. I was under impression that in today's world the number of emails is going down (on account of social networks and whatnot).

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#233

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

i_dont_know_ wrote: post #115
lupire wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you resent HTTPS too? I'd rather turn on encryption/signing/security for my mail than contribute to a system like the telephone network where bank accounts get emptied by transoceanic criminal networks on the regular.

I do actually resent the way google imposed HTTPS everywhere, but my issues were with the rollout as opposed to the tech. Rant for another day :) But with the security/encryption/signing for email... yeah, if it was just an "on" switch somewhere, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately, setting up SPF for something like exim isn't very straightforward at all. It's flipping LOTS of "on" switches in lots of different places,…

Nitpick: you appear to be describing dkim; SPF is a single setting in a single DNS record (per sending domain) and requires no modifications on the sending server

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#234

Post by ausjke »

prlambert wrote: post #183
reaperducer wrote: post #8

Google has no incentive to fix these kinds of problems. It's big enough that when someone complains that a message sent wasn't received, the intended recipient will say, "I never have problems with my Gmail account. It must be you." And the sender has to switch to Gmail to reliably communicate with the outside world. I wish this was just paranoia, but we've seen multiple discussions on HN about Google programs and po…

I'm one of the PMs for Gmail and hang around HN quite a bit. This is my personal take, not an official reply. It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this. Here are a few: Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem. Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects (unlike FB, messengers, any other comms tool of Gmail's scale). Email itself, of course has a…

Google the giant will only bend when lawsuit happens. Assuming Google's AI put an urgent email to spam by mistake and made a huge loss to some party, Google should be immediately sued, probably by class action, only then it will respect small and well-behaved players like the original post here. Whenever I read post like this, I recall its once popular(now withdrawn) slogan "don't be evil".

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#235

Post by swozey »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #221
vbezhenar wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you suggest free email provider with similar level of service which allows to use your own domain?

Does Google allow you to use your own domain for free? They removed the free GSuite tier a long time ago, and they've obscured some the options you could use to configure a similar setup in gmail. I'm not sure if it's still possible.

I don't believe it's possible with non-Google Domain hosted domain names but I own a number of domains that I use to send and receive from my root @gmail.com account for free (Google is my registrar for these). They come in to @gmail.com from @mydomain.com and when I reply it goes out as @mydomain.com. I can also send email from any of my @mydomain.com emails by opening compose and clicking an arrow on my from address.

There is the huge possibility that this will cause issues with some mail servers because I'm assuming it's doing a send on behalf of (I could be totally wrong). But so far (1yr+) I don't recall any issues.

I switched to Proton for a bit but I just didn't enjoy using it at all. The final nail in that coffin; I was in the middle of selling a house and receiving documents and tons of back and forth and it was an absolutely terrible experience. Every realtor/contractor/etcs signature pictures, etc showed up as attachments and the search was awful so having to dig up contracts and everything else that goes along with a house sale was just an absolutely miserable experience. Every single email looked like it had tons of attachments. I had to go through every single email in a thread to find the actual documents.

So I went back to gmail.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#236

Post by cmroanirgo »

prlambert wrote: post #183
reaperducer wrote: post #8

Google has no incentive to fix these kinds of problems. It's big enough that when someone complains that a message sent wasn't received, the intended recipient will say, "I never have problems with my Gmail account. It must be you." And the sender has to switch to Gmail to reliably communicate with the outside world. I wish this was just paranoia, but we've seen multiple discussions on HN about Google programs and po…

I'm one of the PMs for Gmail and hang around HN quite a bit. This is my personal take, not an official reply. It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this. Here are a few: Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem. Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects (unlike FB, messengers, any other comms tool of Gmail's scale). Email itself, of course has a…

As a "small fry" myself, the hoops I've had to jump through in order for Gmail to accept legitimate mail from my mail server are rather large. Like the op, legit email appears in the trash of some recipients for goodness knows why. Like OP I've spf, dkim, & have never been on rbl. I (& services on my machine) are the only senders, and the recipients of those machine messages want them (about 10ppl in total & email have no marketing content). I communicate on port 25 using tls where possible.

It's only ever Gmail that sends mail to spam. Every test I run on that email marks it as clean (generally spam assassin)

Gmail is certainly NOT a part of the open email system you mention, but is a constant thorn in open communication.

Ironically, I use Gapps for one domain and because of my spf settings with "include:_ghs.google.com" I get every cat and his dog trying to send as users from my domain, which thankfully end up in that domain's gapps spam. (hint: let us use geo located includes, like _ghs-us.google.com or _ghs-au.google.com, so that there's a smaller include list!)

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#237

Post by no_wizard »

I often see and hear about this issue a lot and I wonder how other email companies cracked it.

I use FastMail for instance and never have this issue, but I know so many people who gave up on running their own mail servers at the small enterprise level because of stuff like this I often wonder how FastMail does not have these issues but others do. Is it a headers thing I wonder?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#238

Post by joshuamorton »

maxaf wrote: post #9

> I'm sure there is no malicious intent behind this How can anyone be sure of this? This is only one of Google’s practices that seems to follow a pervasive pattern of eroding open internet standards while presenting Google’s own proprietary implementation as somehow superior. Eventually, the open standard loses all meaning because the most popular implementation does not actually adhere to it. Meanwhile, Google reaps…

Email in Gmail isn't used for ad targeting, so this line of thinking doesn't follow well.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#239

Post by detritus »

hazeii wrote: post #90

Recently Google has bounced replies to emails from a gmail.com address to us, with a message about it being "suspected unsolicted email" (for a reply???). That's just egregious (we're on a dedicated server at a reputable supplier, same IP for years, proper email processess, not on any blacklist and only low-volume usage - certainly no spam).

Yup, I literally lost jobs because of responses to enquiries hitting GMail's spam trap, before finally giving up and moving from self-hosting to Fastmail.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#240

Post by tssva »

i_dont_know_ wrote: post #115
lupire wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you resent HTTPS too? I'd rather turn on encryption/signing/security for my mail than contribute to a system like the telephone network where bank accounts get emptied by transoceanic criminal networks on the regular.

I do actually resent the way google imposed HTTPS everywhere, but my issues were with the rollout as opposed to the tech. Rant for another day :) But with the security/encryption/signing for email... yeah, if it was just an "on" switch somewhere, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately, setting up SPF for something like exim isn't very straightforward at all. It's flipping LOTS of "on" switches in lots of different places,…

Are you thinking of DKIM? SPF only requires configuring a DNS entry. Also DKIM did not start with Google. DKIM was originally the work of Yahoo and Cisco. Yahoo, now OATH, has a patent covering it.
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