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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#441

Post by pfranz »

preinheimer wrote: post #434
thaumasiotes wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> - Email coming from Google itself. If email coming from google itself got special treatment there would be masses with pitchforks complaining about that. You've made a lot of good points, but I don't think that's one of them.

I don't think that has anything to do with Google needing special treatment. It shows that the company who made the rules and has every privilege to follow them isn't able to.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#442

Post by creeble »

tankenmate wrote: post #379
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…

Normally I wouldn't +1 a message because it doesn't really seem to add much to the message. But in this case I will (even though it might earn me ire from some). If I could highlight the parent in bold I would. I've run mail servers since the mid 90's and the experience above exactly mirrors my experience. And my takeaway is the same, GMail just doesn't seem to care. I understand that GMail can't give away too much i…

Me too, since 1997. Same IP for over 12 years.

Thing is, most of my messages get delivered. Then suddenly they don't.

Google "giving a shit" means responding to hostmasters about delivery problems, and they just don't.

Please note this, Gmail PM.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#444

Post by CamperBob2 »

shawnz wrote: post #427
CamperBob2 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their customer support is just fine. Only trouble is, we're not the customer, we're the product. (And no, I'm not interested in hearing about how that's a hackneyed worn-out cliché, or whatever, given that it's a true statement. Downvote and move on.) A big part of the problem with Google taking everything over is that only in very limited situations -- the service formerly known as YouTube Red, for instance -- are w…

> I'm not interested in hearing about how that's a hackneyed worn-out cliché Well, it's a hackneyed worn-out cliché. Without the users there's no viable product. That's what makes them the customers and that's why they need adequate customer support. The fact that you pay for the product with ad impressions rather than dollars doesn't change anything about that dynamic.

Well, it's a hackneyed worn-out cliché. Without the users there's no viable product. That's what makes them the customers

No, that's what makes them "users." The customers are the advertisers who actually pay money to Google. You can rest assured that they don't have to post a cri de coeur on social media to get a response from Google when something goes wrong.

IMO, a company that does its level best to act like vital public infrastructure needs to be held to standards appropriate to vital public infrastructure. If that's a controversial point of view, then so be it.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#445

Post by st3fan »

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…

> Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem.

That simply is not relevant anymore if 99% of email is on Gmail.

I want to echo the exact same issues as the original author. Running my own email servers since the 90s I recently just “gave up” - no single indication about spam issues. All green on several tests. But Google rejects mail. Zero help or tools from google to get off their filter or whatever it is that makes these kind of decisions.

Friends and family all have Gmail accounts for those important emails that Must go through. Enough said.

I’ve moved my email to another provider and stopped self hosting.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#446

Post by z3t4 »

I've also run a mail server for a long time. Yahoo and Hotmail are probably the most annoying, Yahoo because you can't do anything about it and Hotmail for blocking entire IP-ranges. I don't blame them though, preventing spam is very hard. Spammers always have spf,dkim,dmarc,reverse dns,signing, etc meanwhile many legitimate senders has none. I'ts a hard problem to solve. I've tried things like increasing the response time so the sender have to sit and wait, or used spam lists, but there are too many false positives. One easy solution is to make it illegal to send spam. Since my country made sending unsolicited e-mail an offense, spam decreased a lot. The second problem is hacked servers. Unless you are running a mail server, always block port 25 in the firewall. So at least the hackers wont be able to send spam on your behalf. Many ISP's already block port 25.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#447

Post by omginternets »

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…

>Firstly, Gmail's success is entirely predicated on the health of the global email ecosystem. Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects [...]

That's ... unconvincing to the point where it sounds like PR spin. How does Gmail not benefit from crappy email service outside of gmail? How do more gmail users not accentuate this?

>Secondly, we care deeply about having positive relationships with developers and all our users.

Frankly, talk is cheap.

I don't mean to be rude, but your response is either (a) completely missing the point or (b) disingenuous. Assuming the former, can you substantiate your claims?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#448

Post by deanishe »

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.

What then should we make of the fact that Google practically ensures that they won't hear about such issues by making it next to impossible to report them?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#449

Post by ocdtrekkie »

toomim wrote: post #380
benou wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gmail does not, inherently, have any network effects This is wrong. The current situation is "if you want to reliably contact gmail users you need a gmail address". This is no different than Facebook or messengers. And that may actually be the incentive for Gmail being such a bad player compared to everybody else.

Also, AMP for Gmail only works in Gmail. https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/bringing-power-amp-...

This is unfortunately technically untrue, as Google has beaten Outlook and Yahoo and Mail.ru into submission and into supporting it. It's still a huge security risk, and an inherently proprietary email spec Google designed and implemented without community input and deployed despite significant community resistance.

But technically, it works outside of Gmail.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#450

Post by gmailvictim »

Add me to the victim list. I've been running my own mail server for 13 years and have to tell everyone I'm intending to email to check their spam as that's probably where my mail will be. I send a handful of mails a week probably. Almost always goes to the bin if it goes to gmail.
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