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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#331

Post by npsimons »

megous wrote: post #244
deelly wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably key point is "..with developers and all our users.." but not individual developers and individual users.

Key point is that words don't matter unless they're backed up by some concrete action. The worst thing about this blocking is that you often times don't get to see what's wrong. So you're running around in circles, trying to use various mx tools on the internet to find the problem. This is not just gmail issue. Though with many smaller providers you'll at least get something like "your blocked by XYZ blacklist".

> This is not just gmail issue. Though with many smaller providers you'll at least get something like "your blocked by XYZ blacklist".

I would much rather get this than silent discard. At least when I've seen things in the logs in the past (yes, I do read my server logs), I have been able to follow up and fix them. I get the sense that Google is even going beyond using 550 and discarding email silently. I just did a grep through my logs to see if this message came up and found it nowhere, yet I have users on my mailing lists claiming they don't get emails and they've checked their spam folders. They're on GMail.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#332

Post by bryanrasmussen »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #322
dingus wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 filte…

>Legitimate class action notices related to Amazon purchases.

You'd think Google had an incentive to get that delivered.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#333

Post by newsoul2019 »

jrockway wrote: post #247
darrmit wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be common with the product teams I’ve interfaced with. Good intentions, but bad prioritization and little incentive to do anything other than cater to the big revenue drivers.

Why would you start a for-profit company to not focus on "big revenue drivers"?

If you are a for-profit company, why would you kill off business lines that are "only" making you $10-$50 million per year?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#334

Post by npsimons »

chrismeller wrote: post #94
organsnyder wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email deliverability has been a hassle for a long time. 15 years ago, AOL was the juggernaut that made sysadmin's lives difficult. I do agree that Google's outsize influence in so many markets is concerning.

It's interesting that you bring up AOL, because I remember dealing with this kind of crap with them. It was annoying, but didn't feel like it was as big of a deal. I guess the only real difference is that with AOL it was less insidious... You knew it was only for aol.com emails and that you weren't dealing with business info. Not that emails to personal addresses aren't important, but at least it wasn't suddenly Some…

> It's interesting that you bring up AOL, because I remember dealing with this kind of crap with them. It was annoying, but didn't feel like it was as big of a deal.

I do too, because there was an actual useful URL that had contact info in the bounces and SMTP errors. IIRC, I actually managed to get a human being on the phone and got this sorted right quick!

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#335

Post by president »

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…

Actions speak louder than words. When I see generic PR phrases like "we care deeply", my bullshit detector immediately goes off the wire.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#336

Post by Felz »

This article didn't mention whether or not their servers are attempting delivery using TLS/StartTLS, which is a good thing to check. I think Google penalizes email delivered insecurely.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#337

Post by pfortuny »

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…

Inventing a reason to reject mail does not sound very much like “caring deeply”. More like “let them deal with it”.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#338

Post by mokus »

phinnaeus wrote: post #306
pdonis wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem That depends on what you define as "health". > Email itself, of course has a huge network effect, and that is because you can email anyone in the world, regardless of what email system they use If that's the case, then why does Gmail system explicitly thwart this objective, as described by this very article? > If we lose an open, hea…

I agree completely with everything you said. It's too bad that Google has no incentive to allow a premium/ad-free experience as that implies having ads is a negative thing, which basically undermines their entire business model.

I would pay quite a lot for google-class services with a binding contract that limits their options for spying on me and is 100% ad free. Instead, I spend an inordinate amount of time configuring my computers to avoid accidentally using their free “services”...

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#339

Post by usefulcat »

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…

> Or do they want all of us to start doing the same?

An increase in public shamings probably means that public shamings become less news- or interest-worthy. So an increase in shamings might not have as much effect as you might expect.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#340

Post by antt »

npsimons wrote: post #328

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 (p…

Google seems to have entered terminal senility. In my circle of friends googles search engine is pretty much useless, they have killed all the useful applications we used and now this.

I can't help but think that we are seeing the google transition to late 90s microsoft now.

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