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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#681

Post by flurdy »

flurdy wrote: post #677
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 also have a 15+ years old set of mail servers and I host mail domains for 10ish friends and family. In fact, I once wrote how to set this up ( http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix ) I no longer use Gmail myself but half of my users relay some aliases to their main Gmail account. No problems with that, except my servers continuously get rate limited by Google: Our system has detected an unusual rate of 421-4.7.0 unsolicit…

I do understand Google's challenge with handling probably the largest amount of email traffic in the world, and then the most spam in the world, and that it is a continuously moving target.

But it does feel like they are treating nearly all minor relays as spam relays. We can not block 100% of spam before we relay onwards to Gmail as that would mean too many false positives emails get blocked, but most try to block as much as possible.

In my case, my servers probably block 99% of spam, but some will get relayed, and most of those ends up being handled by Gmail's even better Bayes scoring and filtered to end users' spam folders.

I don't know what the automatic threshold limit is to be on their naughty list, but it must be very low, as in double digits per day.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#682

Post by SpikeDad »

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…

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

I bet you also take the security of your system seriously. What other Internet platitudes can you spout?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#683

Post by SpikeDad »

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?

More importantly would you like to have your IV changed by a nurse that makes up her own standards for health care?

Google does what's best for Google - how could there be any discussion of that fact in 2019.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#684

Post by ponytech »

gmailvictim wrote: post #450

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.

Same here: I have to text my friends to tell them I sent them an email and check their spam. Nonsense.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#685

Post by yeahitslikethat »

creato wrote: post #667
yeahitslikethat wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I don't think it's fine at all. I think Google, twatter, Facebook, et al don't care because 50 people and who they represent don't matter to them compared to the money they make. When all rounded up it isn't even a single penny on the balance sheet. The owners of these businesses literally never even know from the their only view into the companies. I have no idea why I'm being downvoted on this. Hackers can't do…

I think your position is a little unrealistic. 50 people experiencing problems out of what, a billion? is pretty good. Do you think that if those billion people were served by 20 million small business e-mail providers, that none of those 20 million e-mail providers would ever make a mistake and affect their 50 customers?

I said 50,000 were affected. Only 50 twatty tatted about it.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#686

Post by creato »

yeahitslikethat wrote: post #685
creato wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your position is a little unrealistic. 50 people experiencing problems out of what, a billion? is pretty good. Do you think that if those billion people were served by 20 million small business e-mail providers, that none of those 20 million e-mail providers would ever make a mistake and affect their 50 customers?

I said 50,000 were affected. Only 50 twatty tatted about it.

OK, 20,000 e-mail providers with 50,000 users each. Does that change the point?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#687

Post by tomComb »

reitanqild wrote: post #676
tomComb wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have G Suite, and they also tried a more consumer oriented version but no one wanted to pay. I would love it if more of the Internet were based on payments and micro-payments but consumers have voted decisively against that. I try to sell people on the idea of paying for news but extremely few are willing even for something that critical.

> They have G Suite, and they also tried a more consumer oriented version but no one wanted to pay. I have paid them for years for photo storage. Looking for somewhere to move it in case their AI suddenly decides it doesn't like me (I've already went through a reCaptcha party after trying to dig up some documentation for some special error messages that I felt should be out there somewhere.) > I would love it if more…

> They could have earned a lot more on than than than they do from me not clicking on the dumbest ads I know about.

Then they would have - they are a for-profit company.

My assertion that consumers are not willing to pay if they can get something 'free' (ie. with targetted ads) is hardly new or controversial.

How many news sources do you pay for? I pay for my news and take a very keen interest in its quality, but the media outlets have an extremely difficult time convincing enough people to care enough to pay even for their news - the most important thing of all.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#688

Post by mirimir »

matrixagent wrote: post #647
mirimir wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this mean? > error SPF must allow Google servers to send mail on behalf of your domain. So you must let Google spoof your domain? That seems crazy. ProtonMail has the same error: https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/checkmx/check?domain=pro...

He's wrong about what this tool provides – namely information for people who want to use GSuite for their email. In that context it makes sense that you have to allow Google "spoofing" your domain, of course. But it has nothing to do with what is being discussed here.

Ah. Thanks. It makes sense now. I didn't read carefully enough.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#689

Post by Viliam1234 »

benou wrote: post #213
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…

> 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.

Perhaps the solution is to have two e-mail accounts: a GMail account to communicate with GMail users, and a non-GMail account to communicate with non-GMail users.

Ideally, also a client that handles all this automatically, i.e. chooses the right sender account depending on the recipient, so that I don't have to think about it.

Just like Pidgin was a common solution for AIM and ICQ, this would be a common solution for e-mail and GMail.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#690

Post by toss1 »

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…

I appreciate the response and the evident care at the personal level that you apply to this.

It is also an excellent goal to use AI to scale as many processes as practical to provide ever-broader services.

Yet, it is obvious that, at the corporate level and despite being one of the most massively well-funded companies worldwide, Google is famous for abysmal customer service and most particularly, providing NO way whatsoever for a person who has been damaged by a "false positive" to every correct a real person at Google to get a resolution.

Yes, providing an avenue to real people who could resolve the issue would be expensive. I seriously doubt that it would be so expensive as to make any serious dent in Aplhabet's profitability or stock price (unless, of course, the problems are far more massive than anyone knows).

Moreover, providing the ability for people who have been "false positive" damaged by some spam, account violation, etc. to reach a person for resolution to a problem would also provide large amounts of the fine-grained detailed data that would allow Google to fix its issues at the algorithm level, thereby reducing the need for the support service as well as the frustration.

Why is this not done? Is it that the problems are actually massive but hidden? Is it that management does not care the way you do? Is it that mgt actually wants to drive off all small services in order to dominate? Obviously all speculation, including bad speculation. But leaving zero ways to contact, as well as zero information about the issues, leave the field ripe for all the speculation. This is the sort of reputational problem that can fester for years, seen only as a minor issue -- until it grows so massive and passes a tipping point, where the reputation and market position is unrecoverable. I hope Google does not go that route.

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