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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#541

Post by jrnichols »

Zelphyr wrote: post #426
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…

> It's like we're heading back to the days when people didn't know the difference between AOL and "the internet." I hate to say it, I really do, because I used to respect Google and liked their products, but if you imagine combining the perception of "AOL is the internet" with the way Microsoft acted up to the mid-2000's and I think you have Google.

we're definitely there in the K-12 market. The only email kids know is Gmail. The only browser they know is Chrome. The only OS a lot of them now know is ChromeOS, on the Chromebook their school was basically given "for free." their editors are Google Docs, Google Sheets, they use Google Hangounts to chat. Their phones are Android with all of the Google services. They know YouTube, Google Play, Google Music, etc. YouTube again for music. Some have iPhones .. and their Apple ID is a @gmail.com address.

It terrifies me just how deeply Google has entrenched itself in the K-12 education market. At least when Apple was everywhere, we still had Microsoft Office vs Appleworks/etc.

Google is now more "the internet" than AOL could have dreamed of.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#542

Post by LeonM »

feanaro wrote: post #500
LeonM wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Multiple reasons, but here are a few of them:

- Email is hard to get right. There are many subtle configuration mistakes you can make, and it's pretty hard to detect those mistakes (hence one of the reasons why I started Mailhardener)

- Your users will have high expectations. For email to be used effectively users expect email to work on many devices, have a webmail client, calendar integration, a good search function, good spam detection, infinite backups, ability to have huge attachments, etc, etc.

- Your spam filter is never going to be as effective as that of the big email services. They have ML based spam filters that are constantly evolving. Even if you were to have access to their ML models, you wouldn't have enough data to effectively train that model.

- Hosted email solutions are almost always more cost effective, regardless of the size of organisations. Running and maintaining an email service is labour intensive.

Of course, there are also many legit use cases where you want to run your own email server. But for >99% of organisations, it just won't make any sense to run their own email.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#543

Post by Balgair »

Kalium wrote: post #140
oldjokes wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to be nasty and sarcastic.

Please accept my heartfelt apologies! I can see I was unclear in my genuineness. Let me restate. It is, in my opinion, possible that Google Finance is in a position like that of Google News and thus generates no revenue. Have you considered this possibility? Do you think it might affect the willingness of people to work on a product? If I'm utterly wrong, I would love to know so that I can avoid being wrong this way…

Kalium, I'm going against my better judgement here, but I'm hoping that you are trying to apologize for real. As such, more feedback may be useful to you.

You tend to do this a lot and it does come off as very sarcastic, mocking, and/or un-genuine. As in, like, every sixth comment you leave.

Usually, you say something like : "You're right!" or "You're totally correct!" and then you exaggerate the point the person was trying to make, so much so that it comes off as mocking the comment and the person.

If you are mocking them, stop. It doesn't add anything to the conversation.

You are a pretty quick and sharp person, and you make a lot of very good points. So that's why I'm leaving this comment at all. You may just not realize that this is what you are doing.

I'm hoping that you just haven't seen that your style of commenting is coming across very badly.

But if you are trying to do this on purpose, stop it.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#544

Post by chillwaves »

creeble wrote: post #442
tankenmate wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After reading this thread I checked my spam and it seems google has gotten way more aggressive in the past ~ 6 months when it comes to spam. They are mass mailers and advertisements but they are moving items that I want -- legitimate subscriptions and people I do business with are ending up in spam. Never experienced such a high failure rate before and I have had gmail for about 15 years.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#545

Post by LeonM »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #471
LeonM wrote: post #68

I run a mail monitoring service [0], and we hear this complaint every now and then. A couple of things that regularly seems to trigger false positives in spam algorithms: - no or misconfigured SPF and/or DKIM - no or misconfigured reverse-DNS - automatically included footer texts (confidentiality, copyright, safe a tree don't print, etc) - regular automatic replies from the domain (such as out of office notifications…

You can satisfy all of this, have an IP with an absolutely spotless reputation that you have personally controlled for years that has never sent spam, and still be arbitrarily shitlisted with zero recourse whatsoever.

IP addresses are really insignificant in spam detection because spammers can easily switch to a new IP address.

Like with Google's search algorithm, the spam detection algorithms are secret and evolve constantly. So I'm not claiming I know how the algorithm works, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if IP addresses aren't even used anymore in Google's spam detection.

So no, you are not 'shitlisted' as you called it. There are no lists, there are only algorithms.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#546

Post by pandemicsoul »

robbrit wrote: post #273
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?

ProtonMail has a free tier. It's definitely not the same level of service as Gmail, but I prefer it to being so dependent on the big G juggernaut for a critical service. Downsides: * spam detector is a bit aggressive, sometimes legitimate emails make it in there. * features are limited unless you pay. Full disclosure: I pay for their Plus product. My rationale is that I pay twice as much per month for Netflix yet ema…

I'd argue that if ProtonMail's spam filter is too aggressive then basically you're in the same place you were with Gmail, aren't you? (Except now you're paying?)

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#547

Post by nmjenkins »

tomComb wrote: post #511
bluGill wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free is not possible. Someone needs to pay for email, servers need to be repaired/replaced every few years, the power bill needs to be paid, someone needs to ensure that the latest exploit doesn't compromise the server. You are paying for your email, the only question is how. I use fastmail because the payment is direct: I give them a few bucks each month. With free email (gmail) the payment is not direct. They are d…

> With free email (gmail) the payment is not direct. They are doing something to get money, but what is unknown. I guess you mean something uknown and nefarious. And you are more comfortable with Qihoo 360, the Chinese company that owns Opera/fastmail?

FastMail hasn't been part of Opera for over 5 years now, since well before Qihoo bought most of what was left of Opera: https://fastmail.blog/2013/09/25/exciting-news-fastmail-staf...

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#548

Post by alfiedotwtf »

russh wrote: post #381
tankenmate wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Add me to the "I've run mail servers since the mid 90's and the experience above exactly mirrors my experience." list.

Me too, but early 2000s.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#549

Post by alfiedotwtf »

Imagine a phone carrier dropping your calls before the phone even rang on the other end. This is how I feel most of the time when I email people.

Every new recipient I email, if I don't hear from them within 2 days, I have to contact them out of band to ask them to check their spam folder. The problem is usually Gmail's heavy filtering.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#550

Post by tempestn »

Better that what I've been seeing, which is Google just sending emails sent from my private domain to spam, with no bounce back or notification of any kind. This is despite the fact that I send the emails FROM gmail using their 'send as' feature. Nor does it seem to matter if I'm writing to a contact whom I've exchanged many emails with in both directions for years. If I send from my @gmail address they always go through. Send the same content from my domain and it's a crapshoot.

Edit: And of course, I do have DKIM and SPF configured.

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