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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#691

Post by GFischer »

fpierfed wrote: post #460
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…

This is totally my experience as well. It got so bad that I gave up operating my email server. Anyway, Gmail is getting some heat in this thread and rightfully so. We should however not forget that Microsoft and Yahoo are just as bad if not worse in this respect.

I´ve unfortunately searched for some customer-friendly e-mail provider and people want Google.

I had set up some commercial accounts on Zoho (my own e-mail is on Zoho) but they asked me to migrate to Google, even though it was more expensive.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#692

Post by strimp099 »

"Only when something like this happens you realize just how impossible it is to talk to someone on the modern internet without having Google somewhere in the middle." This says it all and is likely become a strategic imperative for Google along the way.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#693

Post by fencepost »

baudehlo wrote: post #566
tomComb wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Super curious about this response saying on gmail you have more control, because from where I am the “mark as spam” button does nothing but move things to the spam folder. In theory it should learn from that but when someone used my email address to sign up for AT&T no amount of marking things as spam will stop their emails landing in my inbox.

As in signed up for AT&T service? If so it's because it's not spam - it's misdirected mail, but there are tens of thousands of other Gmail users who think that messages almost identical to those are things they absolutely want to receive.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#694

Post by petre »

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…

This is precisely why we should block gmail (and microsoft) in retaliation - because gmail users will start having problems with their accounts.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#695

Post by reitanqild »

tomComb wrote: post #687
reitanqild wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>> 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.

I doubt they ever considered me as a person, only as male 25-65 => show ads for scammy dating sites.

> How many news sources do you pay for?

2 newspapers, +used blendle a while ago, ready to pay for more when I can pay pr read.

I also have paid other things like an tech/art channel on a video site etc.

(I guess I'm not the only HNer that does this?)

> 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.

Around here that might be because my choice is either a two hour drive to somewhere that sells that paper printed, -or to sign up for an auto-renewing subscription.

I could of course sign up and cancel but I already has too much on my plate (more than two kids, trying to be active in my communities etc.)

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#696

Post by vinay_ys »

Does anyone here use encrypted and signed messages on a regular basis? How does gmail handle that on either sending or receiving ends? Is delivery rate better or worse if it is fully encrypted?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#697

Post by fmx »

prlambert wrote: post #270
mcsb4 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simply not true we have no incentive to fix this I just happen to have set up an email server and encountered the same problems with Google as described in the article. I own the IP since quite some time, it is not on any black list, reverse DNS is set up etc. but Google rejects email as spam. And this even happens when the gmail account has added the sender in his address book and has send the first email to…

I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. Our analysts are looking into the issue described in the article, hopefully we find something we can fix that will resolve this.

I struggle to see how your analysts could do this without looking into specific instances of the problem. Perhaps you intend to contact the author of the article to ask for this. That might work in this case, but in the general case there is absolutely no way for people to report this problem to Google!

Yes, I'm yet another person with the same problem as the author of the article - running my own mail server for years, only I send mail from it, very low volume, everything set up properly, etc. The difference is that my emails go to spam, rather than being rejected by the SMTP servers, which to me is even worse, since I never know whether an email I sent to GMail has been delivered or not. Since GSuite is so popular now, I never know this for any unfamiliar domain, unless I do an MX lookup.

You say all the right words, but Google's actions on this issue (or lack thereof) speak much louder. It's very difficult to believe that the situation will improve and many comments here reflect this skepticism.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#698

Post by Kalium »

Balgair wrote: post #543
Kalium wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you. I appreciate your points.

I have seen it go over badly. I've also seen it go over very well. The running total so far seems to favor the latter.

I'm working mainly from Dale Carnegie. The core thesis is this: never tell someone that they're wrong. Instead, start by finding a way to tell them how right they are on a point you genuinely agree with. Once you've satisfied someone's ego, it becomes possible to engage with their intellect. This can be tricky, especially when someone's main point is something you disagree with.

I sincerely doubt that "What if all your stated assumptions are wrong?" would have been well-received. That's exactly the kind of comment that tends to get a defensive response rather a thoughtful one.

My apology was genuine. I had no reason to be nasty, mocking, or sarcastic to this person. I was hoping that they might be willing to re-examine their stated assumptions. I failed to sufficiently hedge against a sarcastic reading. Which is admittedly a difficult task in a text-based medium centered mainly around a language and culture that uses sarcasm heavily. I've yet to find a way to reliably do this.

I do appreciate your feedback. It's a work in progress.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#699

Post by hakfoo »

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…

A few years ago, I was dealing with a few small business sites which were self-hosted and always had deliverability problems with the large mail services (mostly, back in the day, AOL and Yahoo).

Large providers tended to have a world view dividing all senders into two categories: 1) Bulk senders who are clearly mailing the same spam to a list of a billion addresses 2) Non-commercial individual hosts which should be sending five messages a day or less in total.

It felt like there was a huge missing third category for transactional emailers nobody wanted to acknowledge. They are probably difficult to score fairly. A hundred "Order details" emails are going to have the same level of randomness/templatedness as the old Viagra spam which had a random block of Project Gutenberg text pasted at the end to trip up filter math. You're not going to have a clear history of "this address bounced twice, let's stop sending newsletters" when most of your messages are to first time customers or once-every-few-years return ones. A lot of the messages will look generic because they use default shopping cart templates.

To the extent they provided sender guidance, it was focused around use case 1) -- sign up for feedback loops and deal with greylisting (because people really love waiting 18 hours for an acknowledgement)

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#700

Post by craftinator »

dahart wrote: post #485
craftinator wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you downvote, please reply and explain your position. I simply asked if this Gmail PM is going to fix the problem with Gmail in the comments about that problem. So who is upset with my comment and WHY.

Apologies for unsolicited advice, but since you’re newish... Downvotes don’t mean anyone’s upset, there’s a large variety of reasons people downvote. Same is true of upvotes, there are lots of different reasons for them. Try not to take either personally. Downvotes don’t require explanation, just like upvotes don’t require explanation. It’s a great idea to be curious and seek ways to avoid downvotes, always good to a…

Thank you for the advice! I've always seen HN as a great platform for thoughtful discussion. I don't see downvoting a comment that doesn't have any replies yet as a way to participate in that discussion. I was genuinely curious what view point a person could have to not find my comment beneficial to the discussion. I'll try to make these queries a bit less complaint-sounding in the future! Thanks again!
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