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Google Is Eating Our Mail

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Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#71

Post by Arnt »

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 too self-host and have done for decades. When I had a problem that may perhaps have been like this, Google disabled the relevant part of them spam filter and made an issue in some internal tracker. I write "Perhaps" because my report was a lot more specific.

Google sells mail+spam filtering+more as a product, with a seven-digit number of paying customers, each of which pay per month and user. What more incentive could they have?

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#72

Post by duxup »

>I wonder. Google as a company is famously focused on machine learning through automated analytics and bare minimum of human contact

It should be noted that ultimately these efforts to "learn" result in ML, AI whatever pointed AT you, not working for you.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#73

Post by r3bl »

greenyoda wrote: post #43
reaperducer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I see this as just more Google incompetence. Gmail has just become bad. If you want to get all your mail you have to use something else. It's like we're going back to the days when each e-mail service only trusted messages from its own users, and if you wanted messages to go to another network, you had to use an e-mail gateway. Can I get my ...!killer!jolnet bang path back?

I don't think this is a general problem with e-mail services. If you use an e-mail provider that's a paid service rather than a pipeline into an ad company, you actually get good service and a customer support team that has an incentive to fix your problems. (I've been very happy with Fastmail for many years.)

I agree. I self-host a lot of services I use, but I'll happily let someone else deal with my emails passing through to Gmail for a few bucks a month.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#75

Post by mattkrause »

bachmeier wrote: post #40
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…

Rule #1 if you're applying for jobs or graduate school - Don't use gmail for your email address. Source: Led a hiring committee this year. Interview invitations and job offers went straight to the junk mail folder. Also serve as Director of Graduate Studies. Admissions and funding offers, as well as general inquiries about availability, all went straight to the junk mail folder. We're not going to change our email se…

I think you’ve got to meet people halfway here.

While’s gmail’s filtering is obviously neither your responsibility nor under your control, you also can’t really fault people for using one of the most popular email services on the planet.

I would hope that your department follows up some other way (you surely have a phone number!). Searches are crazy time consuming and expensive, and grad student recruitment isn’t exactly free either.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#76

Post by lupire »

i_dont_know_ wrote: post #6

As someone who runs their own personal mail server, this annoys me to no end. I set up DKIM, SPF, and reverse-DNS records and resented every moment of it. Even after all that, there's some chance that an email from my server will be marked as insecure/spam or otherwise just not be delivered because Google has come up with some new brilliant mail security/auth/permission scheme that the world has to adopt tomorrow or…

Do you resent HTTPS too?

I'd rather turn on encryption/signing/security for my mail than contribute to a system like the telephone network where bank accounts get emptied by transoceanic criminal networks on the regular.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#78

Post by Silhouette »

rc_mob wrote: post #30
sneak wrote: post #11

I have run a private mailserver for over 20 years, and I have the same problem. There's no telling what Google will let through. I have a second account at a medium-sized email provider, basically paying them for access to the email deliverability cartel.

We need a new message protocol

There's nothing wrong with the basic principle of email (other than its lack of built-in security, arguably).

The problem is that certain large organisations now claim to offer an email service, but don't actually make it work properly. It might have been better for the rest of the community to block those services until they did work properly to force everyone to play by the same rules, but unfortunately we have reached a point where some of them are too big for that to be a practical solution.

The obsession with fighting spam and malware means some mail services are now far too ready to accept false positives where they block legitimate mail, in order to reduce the risk of false negatives where they let illegitimate messages through. This seems strange, because often the false positive will be more damaging. In the cases where it is not, such as messages being sent with known malware attached, the receiving mail service could still deliver a short replacement message to the intended recipient instead, notifying them that something was blocked because of malware and providing essential details like the sender and subject line, so the recipient could take further action rather than miss something important.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#79

Post by Tharkun »

I've had Google blackhole me several times. Each time without any apparent reason. It's impossible to talk to a human being at Google who is able or willing to help. I've had similar problems with MS, but at least I was able to talk to a human being and get the situation resolved.

Re: Google Is Eating Our Mail

#80

Post by bko »

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."

Why is this no longer true?

IMO, other competitors came along offering a better service/experience and AOL just couldn't compete. At the time, you could not know what this better product looked like. I believe the same will happen with the internet giants of today.

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