Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
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Re: Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
#2To the contrary it will be very good for innovation because it means people will build extensions for other email providers such as Fastmail.
Re: Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
#3As a gmail user - good to hear this. In the long run trust is going to be a much more important commodity that letting a spam app into your gmail.
If you look at the service that want access to all your gmail data - many promise something "free" but then mine that data (in the fine print) to send you offers, alert you to "savings" etc.
I automatically turn down apps that say they need access to my entire google drive and all email. Why not just ask for permissions for a single app specific folder? Ie, fax apps -> they should just store inbound faxes into one folder rather than asking for full drive access.
Re: Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
#4As a gmail user - good to hear this. In the long run trust is going to be a much more important commodity that letting a spam app into your gmail. If you look at the service that want access to all your gmail data - many promise something "free" but then mine that data (in the fine print) to send you offers, alert you to "savings" etc. I automatically turn down apps that say they need access to my entire google drive…
> Why not just ask for permissions for a single app specific folder?
Basically because Gmail A) doesn't have folders B) doesn't have permissions based on tags. Otherwise most Gmail API apps would have this option.
The same thing is a problem when you want to delegate access to an email account, where there should be a way to delegate access based on tags, but there just isn't.
What you can now do is create Gmail Add-Ons, which only have access to this specific thread that's open when you click to activate the add-on. E.g. this is how we created https://www.prettyfwd.com
Re: Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
#5This is very helpful to see, along with the gmass blog mentioned within. We've been going through this process for months and it's definitely a moving target with no clear path to resolution. The whole process feels a bit Kafkaesque.
Re: Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
#6As both a gmail user and developer interested in applications to help me manage my personal information, this is incredibly depressing to hear.
The idea of a verification process itself is great, and I applaud that effort. But some of these barriers seems put in place solely to kill competition and prevent startups from filling the personal data needs before Google comes up with its own plan.
These exorbitant fees of $15,000 and $75,000 are completely unjustifiable.
Re: Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
#7Even for non-Gmail apps, this process is incredibly painful. I have an app that has been stuck in the process for weeks. Once you have read through the incredibly confusing and out of date documentation and submit what you think is the correct set of setting to comply with their policy, you then have to deal with the reviewer who will email you once every week if you are lucky. Usually to understand what they are asking you to fix you have to email them back and forth a few times. I love the platform, but they need to fix this aspect of it.
Re: Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
#8Even for non-Gmail apps, this process is incredibly painful. I have an app that has been stuck in the process for weeks. Once you have read through the incredibly confusing and out of date documentation and submit what you think is the correct set of setting to comply with their policy, you then have to deal with the reviewer who will email you once every week if you are lucky. Usually to understand what they are ask…
They emailed you once a week? You are indeed lucky.
I guess I need to bug them more, I haven't heard anything in weeks (busy with implementation).
One warning: choose the email address for your Google developer account carefully, there doesn't seem to be a way to change it later. It is forever tied to your permissions and approvals, afaict.
Re: Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
#9Even for non-Gmail apps, this process is incredibly painful. I have an app that has been stuck in the process for weeks. Once you have read through the incredibly confusing and out of date documentation and submit what you think is the correct set of setting to comply with their policy, you then have to deal with the reviewer who will email you once every week if you are lucky. Usually to understand what they are ask…
Worse still, in six months times the requirements will change and your previously approved scopes will no longer be approved. I've also had to deal with broken OAuth verification forms on Google's site (400 errors from their backend, with no UI feedback), and the complete inability to get a response from a human.
Re: Google’s painful Gmail OAuth verification process
#10[deleted]