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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#491

Post by jolmg »

_eht wrote: post #383
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 will chime and validate this experience. You will not fully understand or realize the hostility google has towards open email unless you have working experience with email protocols. This is by design. It is my belief that this is intentional and I would love to be corrected if it’s not.

Reminds me of this email from Linus Torvalds about a Gmail bug that was affecting git:

https://public-inbox.org/git/CAHk-=whP1stFZNAaJiMi5eZ9rj0MRt...

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#492

Post by [deleted] »

Goronmon wrote: post #293
PaulHoule wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it astonishing how much people devalue software and information services. The same people who have to have a $1500 phone and seem to think nothing of dropping $150 a month on Verizon or AT&T won't spend $5 on any cloud service. This is why Google keeps winning and everyone else is losing, particularly the people who get the "free" services but don't have any say about those services. The real numbers might be…

You seem so unsure about your own point that you immediately downplay a users concerns about spending $250 a year by reducing that number to $5. Why the need to fabricate a theoretical number when someone provided you with a specific value? If I spend $300 dollars on a phone every 2-3 years and $40 for service a month, am I then permitted to raise concerns about spending hundreds of dollars a year for email accounts?

[deleted]

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#493

Post by notatoad »

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…

it's cool that you hang around HN, but this kind of response just exacerbates the big problem with Google these days: unless you can get to the top of HN, or picked up by TechCrunch, you have no hope of getting any resolution for any of the bad things that Google does. Whether you have incentive to fix it or not, the reality is that you refuse to acknowledge these "false positives" or give people any recourse to fix them.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#494

Post by DenseComet »

_pmf_ wrote: post #141
jonnycomputer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Break up Google/Alphabet. Way past time.

Would be a much more important case if the EU commission that cared about actual freedom instead of competitors.

The bigger problem is how to define what Google is and split it. Many of their platforms post losses like youtube, because they can afford to spend their ad money to prop it up. If you split away youtube, youtube would likely fold. Similar thing with android, Google props up android so they have an ecosystem they can get data from to use for ads. If android was split off, it would have no income stream and likely fold.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#495

Post by sumosudo »

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…

Maybe AI/ML is actually broken..

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#496

Post by tyingq »

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…

Funny you mention AOL. There used to be a magic formula for how many concurrent SMTP connections, how many emails/minute, etc, you could pump at them before you silently went into spam.

I worked on a team with a large (real double opt in, not spam) email list. We had to pay for a bunch of AOL accounts to figure out the trigger points, so that we could get our email updates out overnight without tripping AOL's spammer logic.

And there was a time when they had dominant email share like Google has now.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#497

Post by ehsankia »

the_jeremy wrote: post #473
Chlorus wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, SPF was being developed long before Gmail was a thing and was pushed for by at least 1 other (Yahoo) mass mail provider, as was reverse DNS verification. If you're going to be salty at someone, it should be the spammers.

Perhaps he was indirectly referring to MTA-STS[1] that Google sponsored, co-authored, and recently released in beta? [1]: https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/04/gmail-making-em...

I think the point still stands. As annoying as any of these technologies can be for someone maintaining a mail server, the unfortunate reality is that we don't live in the early web utopia anymore. There are people seriously trying to bypass and break these systems, which is why these protocols are needed. Being angry at them doesn't solve the underlying issue.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#498

Post by Rondom »

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…

It really got worse. In the past years (always the same IP, good reputation, DKIM), I had a few mails land in the spam folder of gmail users, but it did not happen very often.

This week I encountered the following situation the first time: 1. I received an email from a Google apps (or whatever it is called) user. My response to that email landed in the spam folder. 2. I exchanged one or two mails more with another person in the same organisation without problems. 3. Suddenly my response got rejected. I tried sending via various means such as via Thunderbird, via mobile on 4G, via mobile on Wi-Fi, changing the content slightly... No chance. My email got rejected. In the I ended up calling the person from number 1 on his mobile to get the second person's mobile number... Needless to say, I have been less than pleased.

Person 1 was very surprised about their spam filter misbehaving, but at least I can now offer an excuse by pointing to this blog post...

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#499

Post by tomComb »

mintplant wrote: post #348
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. Yep. I missed an invitation to a Google-hosted event at a conference I attended because the email (from an @google.com address, no less) got caught in Gmail's spam filter.

Yup, I've had the same thing. Just kinda amusing and ironic since I didn't happen to care about that event but it makes one nervous about relying on spam filtering.

On the other hand, once you train it a bit, it is mostly remarkable good. For me, switching from fastmail.fm (which was pretty good itself) to Gmail gave me a big improvement in spam control.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#500

Post by feanaro »

LeonM wrote: post #184
gambler wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with all this corporate shills chant that "Hosting your own things is easier than ever before".

I know it's going to be an unpopular opinion in this thread, but my opinion is that email is one of the things that most businesses shouldn't run themselves.

Why?
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