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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#571

Post by thaumasiotes »

m463 wrote: post #565
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…

I think the SPAM folder is a separate issue (although important) The article discusses mail not being accepted by google/gmail in the first place.

Fair comment. But that issue is pretty simple: there is no good reason for them to fail to deliver email under any circumstances. (This has happened to me too -- someone tried to email my gmail account and gmail completely refused to deliver it. It was pretty embarrassing.)

Messages they think you won't want to receive are what the spam folder is for.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#572

Post by emmelaich »

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…

> There is no tool available to me to understand

I _think_ this is because G doesn't want people gaming the system.

> or correct the "problem".

I regularly fish mail from my spam bin. From mailing lists, and other important stuff -- and indeed Google's own mail!

One thing you can do is to get people to add you to their contacts list.

It's a hard problem. There is one "solution" you probably do not want. Have Google (and other companies) give their imprimatur to certain mail senders.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#573

Post by lolc »

mullingitover wrote: post #392

Gmail can be pretty aggressive with spam filtering, but I'm very happy with the bias toward flagging things as spam. Spam was such an infuriating problem, and lots of marketers would happily push the line if they didn't live in terror of being blacklisted by Google. If only Google could the legacy telephone networks like they run Gmail.

I get a fair amount of spam from Gmail accounts. abuse@gmail.com seems defunct to me because I never got an answer to my reports of unsolicited mail. I absolutely don't want them to run the phone network I'm using.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#574

Post by m463 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #571
m463 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the SPAM folder is a separate issue (although important) The article discusses mail not being accepted by google/gmail in the first place.

Fair comment. But that issue is pretty simple: there is no good reason for them to fail to deliver email under any circumstances. (This has happened to me too -- someone tried to email my gmail account and gmail completely refused to deliver it. It was pretty embarrassing.) Messages they think you won't want to receive are what the spam folder is for .

"fail to deliver email under any circumstances."

The amount of spam that would be delivered if they didn't discriminate AT ALL is enormous.

They have to read all this feedback and discriminate better.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#575

Post by mirimir »

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…

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

But the problem with all Google services is that there's apparently nobody listening. Unless you're a paying customer, and even then, I gather that it's iffy. It's all automated, in extremely unhelpful ways.

I do appreciate, however, that it's largely a scale issue. Google is just so big, and operates on such small margins, that it's arguably not economically feasible to provide individualized support.

Unless you make it to the HN front page, or whatever.

As a practical matter, if you want to send email to Gmail accounts, you'd better be using Gmail. And apparently, even that doesn't always work.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#576

Post by eggsome »

mthoms wrote: post #344
ericol wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Argentina. Few years back, an ex government official from the previous government was caught in the act of hiding 8 million dollars in a church. My partner's auncle was also an ex government official from the previous government. He was in charge of the country's office for regulation work in rural areas. Up to that point, he was a complete believer that the government he was part of, was there to really ch…

>Also, I think that right now companies like Google and FB should be treated and reasoned about like states. To think that they will not abuse their power in one way or the other - just like countries do - is also "a little" naive. That companies this big ought to be reasoned about just like Nation States is a very interesting idea.

Forcing mega corps to assume the responsibility of statehood is one of the key plot points in the "Poor mans fight" series of books. (some of the best sci-fi I've read in a while too).

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#577

Post by lolc »

no_wizard wrote: post #237

I often see and hear about this issue a lot and I wonder how other email companies cracked it. I use FastMail for instance and never have this issue, but I know so many people who gave up on running their own mail servers at the small enterprise level because of stuff like this I often wonder how FastMail does not have these issues but others do. Is it a headers thing I wonder?

Fastmail is big compared to the operator in this article. Fastmail is probably big enough that some Gmail engineers will know how Fastmail's SMTP chatter looks. If you don't have volume you don't get that.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#578

Post by winkeltripel »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #571
m463 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the SPAM folder is a separate issue (although important) The article discusses mail not being accepted by google/gmail in the first place.

Fair comment. But that issue is pretty simple: there is no good reason for them to fail to deliver email under any circumstances. (This has happened to me too -- someone tried to email my gmail account and gmail completely refused to deliver it. It was pretty embarrassing.) Messages they think you won't want to receive are what the spam folder is for .

> there is no good reason for them to fail to deliver email under any circumstances

Yes there is. They don't want to carry traffic from anybody from the major email blacklists. If a mail server is on a real, very transparently-managed blacklist, no large provider should be accepting their smtp traffic.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#579

Post by willand31 »

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…

If Google really cared about the health of the global email ecosystem maybe you guys should consider putting a GPL on Gmail. Maybe if we could study the code and come up with a solution that benefits everyone maybe we could make email better. Instead you guys at Google just want to maintain your near monopoly on a vital part of our online existence.
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