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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#631

Post by rodgerd »

DenseComet wrote: post #494
_pmf_ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fol…

So we'd lose a neo-Nazi enrichment factory? Not seeing the problem.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#632

Post by laughinghan »

pandemicsoul wrote: post #546
robbrit wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

The issue described in the OP is email not even making it to the spam folder. If it at least makes it to ProtonMail's spam folder, that's an improvement.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#633

Post by blunte »

The black box is more mysterious to me. I had a client for whom I managed a G-Suite account with a custom domain name. The domain was not on a blacklist, and things generally worked well.

One day a colleague and I discovered that he had not received some of my emails (intra-domain - me@example.com to him@example.com).

This is all within the confines of Google. Google had flagged some messages as spam, and by what determination I could not fathom. The content seemed perfectly typical.

I have had really pleasant experiences with G-Suite human support, at least in terms of the quality of interaction. But they could not answer why some intra-domain emails were being flagged as spam. I have suspicions that it would take a whole team of G engineers to maybe identify what bit of logic in their systems (incorrectly) marked some of the emails as spam.

It seems the beast (automation) is just almost not under their control anymore.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#634

Post by ddalex »

busyant wrote: post #177
cptskippy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like as they leave more and more up to the algorithms, we suffer. I've been having this ever increasing in frequency issue where Gmail Search just doesn't working. Not that it doesn't return search results but rather that it returns what I know to be incorrect results. I have an email with some account information that I access a couple times a year at most but will consistently need at least once a year. Just…

> I feel like as they leave more and more up to the algorithms, we suffer. With all the hand-wringing about what happens when the "computers" take all of our jobs, I think you crystallized how it all ends for us. It won't be a cinematic extinction of humanity. We will just be ignored--each of us trying to talk to a machine with a human voice, and each of us perpetually on-hold.

What a beautiful premise for a short story. Write it!

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#635

Post by rb666 »

jolmg wrote: post #373
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail isn’t free?

Used to be, but it's probably popular enough now that still offering free accounts without any way to profit off of them might be too burdensome.

Indeed, I am very glad they have no free tier. It keeps bad apples out and let's them focus on actual paid customers. Great products don't need a free tier.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#636

Post by ddalex »

jrnichols wrote: post #541
Zelphyr wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You…

The question now is fight them or join them. On Microsoft people had chosen to fight, because the tech was horrible in effect, and Linux made much nicer server platforms.

On Google, I'm not so sure. The tech is nice, and everything works beautifully for 99% of the users

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#637

Post by chupa-chups »

StudentStuff wrote: post #586
ljm wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before I switched to fastmail, gmail would not believe me when I marked an email as not-spam. They would still get flagged. All I wanted was updates from one band. That didn’t stop me from repeatedly getting junk from every other record label my email was sold to. It was an endless procession of shit I never subscribed to.

"Inboxing" with Gmail & Outlook is a baroque, hellish process for mailservers. When either provider decides your small email server is sending spam (eg: sending an email with an attachment, or any kind of form email like a daily report) you won't get through to user inboxes, and instead you'll be routed to spam, or for Outlook.com hosted addresses they will accept mail from your server and send it to /dev/null. Gmail…

At my workplace we have two email addresses, one from google mail (gmail for business) and one from MS Exchange.

I never had a problem with gmail for business regarding spam. I regularly receive mails from smaller businesses (some of them hosting their own mail server) and never had a complaint from anyone yet. Since i can also be contacted via phone i'd know.

On the other hand, MS Exchange constantly delivers obvious spam mails and (quite seldomly, but still) swallows legitimate mail.

Anectodal, i know. And disclaimer: the behavior depicted in the article is as bad as it gets, if everything is as described.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#638

Post by roca »

slacka wrote: post #585
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…

First of all, if you check this site: https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/checkmx/check?domain=tab... It is not to be set up correctly. Now in your case, you failed to mention DMARC records. ALL of the big cloud email services have required that for years. Your SMTP server checklist is straight out of 2005. This entire thread reminds me of the guy who pulled out of a desk drawer an Analog Startac cell phone and blame…

This tool checks that you have set up your domain correctly for use with Google Apps.

For domains that are not using Google Apps, its results are meaningless.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#640

Post by Thiez »

badpun wrote: post #621
yeahitslikethat wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something happens a trillion times a day with .00001 error rate, then 50 MILLION things went wrong, affecting, say 50,000 people. 50 of them blast twitter and it seems the world is collapsing. The world is resilient.

Sometimes error rates, even nominally low ones, are bad. Would you like to have your IV changed by a nurse with 0.001 error rate?

I imagine most humans have error rates worse than that. And what does 'error rate' even mean in that context? A small delay or a catastrophic failure ending in death and destruction?
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