Google Is Eating Our Mail • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#321

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #278

mcsb4 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's not just small fries getting hit by this. Google regularly refuses to deliver mail from backerkit.com to my account, by far the most popular Kickstarter fulfillment support service. I frequently have to contact Kickstarters and ask them to manually send me mail because Google is refusing to accept it, which is annoying and wastes their time. I wish Google had a way you could tell it "messages from these people/d…

[deleted]

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#322

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

dingus wrote: post #299

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…

I appreciate the response. From someone who has operated a mail server since 2002, it comes across that Gmail does not care about cooperating with small but legitimate mail servers. SPF, DKIM, reverse DNS, no blacklists, no open relay, longtime ownership of IPs, etc etc. Using various mail testers returns a 10/10 deliverability score. And yet, messages sent to Gmail always go into the spam folder, or are never delive…

I've had gmail send the following to the spam folder:

- Legitimate class action notices related to Amazon purchases.

- Email coming from addresses to which I had already sent email. (!)

- Email from my landlord.

- Email coming from Google itself.

Based on the contents of my spam folder, which I have to check fairly often because of the extreme overaggressiveness, I would be vastly better off if nothing ever got filtered at all. [1]

>> There are going to be false positives, we will make mistakes, but we certainly care a lot about fixing issues like this when we hear about them.

This doesn't sound honest, or at least not complete. People have been complaining about this for years. I have personally been complaining about this for years. The loss of obviously legitimate email is completely outrageous.

It doesn't look intentional (look at that fourth category!), but it certainly doesn't look like anyone is trying to address the problem.

[1] Yes, if spam filtering was disabled, more spam might get sent.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#323

Post by ok_coo » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

ghostly_s wrote: post #251

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…

> There are going to be false positives, we will make mistakes, but we certainly care a lot about fixing issues like this when we hear about them. Oh really? Then what is the mechanism by which an affected user can report an issue like this and receive individual, accountable response? Because that is what a company that cares about fixing issues does. As far as I can tell, the only redress available for any issue li…

This is the part that's going to bite them when antitrust comes around.

They are largely unaccountable and there's no real way to get a hold of a human being unless you shame them on social media and it gets enough traction.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#324

Post by JoshTriplett » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

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…

I use email hosting from my domain name provider (email in my profile). I regularly find out that personal emails from me end up in people's spam folders on gmail. As far as I can guess from digging into email headers, gmail is upset because my domain name provider's email server doesn't use whatever the latest mail-server signing mechanism gmail expects is. There's absolutely nothing I can do about that, and no obvious way I can get gmail to stop treating my mail as questionable and throwing it in people's spam folders. And it's not at all obvious how to debug this.

I get why gmail isn't transparent about all their spam-filtering mechanisms. But when personal email to gmail users is being regularly classified as spam, that produces a serious usability problem for non-gmail users.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#325

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #278

mcsb4 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's not just small fries getting hit by this. Google regularly refuses to deliver mail from backerkit.com to my account, by far the most popular Kickstarter fulfillment support service. I frequently have to contact Kickstarters and ask them to manually send me mail because Google is refusing to accept it, which is annoying and wastes their time. I wish Google had a way you could tell it "messages from these people/d…

[deleted]

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#326

Post by tedunangst » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

jonnycomputer wrote: post #86

redm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholly agree with your statement. I would add that, sadly, its like this with most things Google: 1) vague descriptions of the problem, 2) impossible to get support or talk to anyone, 3) severe consequences (because of the ubiquity of Google’s platforms i.e. search, Gmail, Android, Chrome). Anyone who’s had a safe browsing problem, an App Store issue, or, heaven forbid, an AdSense issue will attest. As far as it re…

Break up Google/Alphabet. Way past time.

How would this fix delivery for gmail? Gmail will be the same monolith it is today.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#327

Post by newsoul2019 » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

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…

>> but we certainly care a lot about fixing issues like this when we hear about them

It's sheer chance that you happened upon this HN post. Google needs to have an open, healthy customer service infrastructure in place to hear about, track, resolve, and follow up on reported issues. This is antithetical to "The Google Way". That is how you get posts like this.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#328

Post by npsimons » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

I'll just chip in with everyone else who is also self-hosting:

I'm in a similar boat; been running email servers since before GMail existed. My personal one I've been running out of a home server closet since 2001. I've also done everything I can to guarantee I'm not running an open relay and not sending email unsolicited. Have been mostly lucky so far, but occasionally I will have people on mailing lists I manage (people I have met IRL and put them on the list to organize group meetings IRL) not get email. Used to be other stupid mail providers (AOL comes to mind), but these days it appears to be Google, sometimes.

I've had this domain nearly twenty years and run email on it for that same amount of time. I'm not going to "just switch", especially to a privacy invading ad-spewing "alternative" that doesn't give me as much control. Fix your damn servers, Google.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#329

Post by Xamayon » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #278

mcsb4 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's not just small fries getting hit by this. Google regularly refuses to deliver mail from backerkit.com to my account, by far the most popular Kickstarter fulfillment support service. I frequently have to contact Kickstarters and ask them to manually send me mail because Google is refusing to accept it, which is annoying and wastes their time. I wish Google had a way you could tell it "messages from these people/d…

Google Apps (or whatever it's called now after the last dozen name and service changes since "Postini") does offer a whitelist function, but as far as I can tell it's there only to placate users. Whitelisting domains or individual email addresses globally, or per user seems to have no bearing at all on whether they will show up in your inbox... Postini used to work flawlessly, it's hard to imagine how they could have screwed it up so badly.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#330

Post by newsoul2019 » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

amenod wrote: post #317

joering2 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you profile claims you are from Google, you should know by helping here you really doing disservice to everyone else having same problems. Hacker News is not a “gmail customer support hotline center”. You have billions of dollars to setup a system or heck the whole state of the art department to help people with their gmail problem. So you will help two people on HN bitching at gmail.. what about all those that…

Not sure why you are being downvoted, you have a point. There is no excuse for the way Google is operating now - poor customer support, the only recourse twits and HN posts. I think it also hurts Google themselves. There is a reason they have trouble competing with AWS. Why should developers trust Google that there will be a person on the other side helping them out when things go wrong? And they always do, at worst…

I don't think you can have an open, healthy email ecosystem, when the parties involved (the people running and managing email infrstructure) can't communicate with each other and get help.