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Gmailify: The best of Gmail, without an gmail address
- chrisamiller 11y agoI assume that under the hood, they've just set up Gmail as an IMAP client that accesses your other account?
- Artemis2 11y agoGiven the specificity of the providers they list, they are probably using their APIs instead of IMAP, which is a lot easier.
- rdancer 11y agoDo you think the specific e-mail providers were willing to agree on binding service-level agreements?
- obelisk_ 11y agoOr they've just whitelisted said providers after having either verified that providers IMAP implementations comply with IMAP standards, or they've whitelisted said providers because those providers were big enough that it was worth the trouble for Google to work around issues with those providers IMAP implementations.
- Hurdy 11y agoIndeed. The Gmail app itself has been able to act as an IMAP client before, but (as it's purely client side) this mode doesn't offer all Gmail features and is quite battery and bandwidth intensive as IMAP wasn't really designed for mobile devices. With Gmailify, the IMAP synchronization happens on Google servers, which also do normal spam detection and categorization, and the phone accesses the data like any normal Gmail account.
- frik 11y ago> IMAP (...) quite battery and bandwidth intensive not true at all. You should change your shitty app
- jakebasile 11y agoThis means that Yahoo and Outlook users have access to Google Now email-based cards before those of us using Google Apps.
- mh- 11y agoit's astounding that they still haven't bridged the UX gap for users w/ Google Apps accounts all these years later. Nowadays, with the more enterprise-y features (policy, etc.) of the {Gmail,Apps} for Work, I at least get _why_ they're not on parity. But if you asked me 5 years ago, I would have never guessed this (Apps users missing out on XYZ) would still be a thing.
- andybak 11y agoYep. I'd be paying Google cold, hard, cash for a Google Apps account if it wasn't for this.
- magicalist 11y agoThis needs to start eating its own tail and support gmailifying google apps accounts :)
- tssva 11y agoGoogle Apps supports Google Now email-based cards. It needs to be enabled by your Google Apps administrator.
- jakebasile 11y agoI've heard this before, and as far as I can tell it isn't true. There is an option buried in Device Management that claims to turn on Google Now for Android users but the service it enables is a subset of the full capability of the product. Namely, you get no cards based off of your email inbox. No flight notifications, package tracking, and similar things.
- tssva 11y ago
- madspindel 11y agoIs it using Push-IMAP? Because your IMAP accounts in your regular @gmail.com account often has a delay like 30 minutes or more.
- bigtones 11y agoI would guess it is using Push-IMAP to communicate with Yahoo Mail, Outlook/Hotmail etc. That's why they have only implemented it on mobile devices and not the Gmail web experience - because it's a client to server fetch model.
- SXX 11y agoThat delay you talking about depend on how often you get new mail on particular account as gmail trying to not check account every minute if it's only get mail once a week. Though delay can be really low if you get new mail every few minutes. And you can artificially decrease it by setting simple script that would send some random mail to that account and then just filter it on gmail-side.
- tinhangliu 11y agoI will try it now and share my experience here
- Animats 11y agoAw, I thought it was going to be a way to get the functionality of Gmail without Google.
- sp332 11y agoWhich functionality?
- giancarlostoro 11y agoAll the mail client functionality, without the Google servers powering it.
- alooPotato 11y agoThe client does surprisingly little, all the good stuff is powered by Google's servers
- currysausage 11y agoJust an example: As far as I can tell, they are still the only provider that gets conversation view "right."
- krrrh 11y agofastmail is pretty close.
- sleepyhead 11y agoI think the FastMail webapp is better than Gmail.
- tajen 11y agoFastMail. Plus they're Australian and there's no story yet about NSL down under.
- mistermann 11y ago
- praveenster 11y agoWill there be relevant ads on the side for gmailified email from other providers?
- anonfunction 11y agoSo it's android only?
- Johnie 11y agoI wonder how this actually works. It seems like for Gmail to provide this functionality, it needs to copy your external email to Google's servers and do server side processing. I can't imagine that it does spam protection, Google Now cards, and search all client side.
- Selfcommit 11y agoSeems pretty straight forward - pretend you signed up for a Google account and also had that account connect to your other email addresses (Like people have been doing for years, and arguably one of gmail's best features) Now just rebrand it without the visible requirement of having a Google Account. I wouldn't be surprised if you're still getting a Google account in the process, it's just not advertised.
- Hurdy 11y agoWhen you go through the sign up flow you can select whether you want to Gmailify your address into an existing or a new Google account. We make it very explicit that all your mails are being copied into Google servers. By the way, while Gmail always has offered ways to just "import" your messages from a third party address, with Gmailify you get a full two way sync, so you can e.g. keep using the Yahoo UI and your changes will show up in Gmail.
- OxO4 11y agoI do not seem to have the option to gmailify my address. Is the feature restricted to specific providers? If yes, are there any plans to support Office365 addresses?
- Hurdy 11y agoIt's currently limited to consumer accounts on Outlook.com and Yahoo.
- ikeboy 11y agoCan I gmailify my other gmail accounts into my main one and get two way sync?
- levesque 11y agoAfter reading this I tried to install an exchange account on my gmail app. It asked for a bunch of extra permissions for the specific exchange account, including the permission to "Erase all data" from the telephone, resetting it to factory settings. Not gonna happen. From what I gather those permissions were requested by the exchange server, so my university would be the one to blame. Why a server would ask for this permission is beyond me.
- fwn 11y agoIf you are still searching on a solution on this: I were able to solve the permission problem on Android with Mailwise. Apart from the cool exchange feature, it's a fairly average client though. http://mail-wise.com/faq/#bypass http://mail-wise.com/faq/#bypass
- Sumaso 11y agoDefault permissions are the ability erase everything. It actually requires work to remove those permissions. Probably just your exchange admin doesnt have an incentive to change the settings.
- duaneb 11y ago> Default permissions are the ability erase everything. This can never go wrong.
- magicalist 11y agothankfully it's not true
- magicalist 11y ago> Default permissions are the ability erase everything No they aren't. You get no permissions by default. You have to do work to get any. What's likely is Device Administration was added as a feature for exchange admins to remotely erase compromised/old/whatever phones.
- eclipxe 11y ago
- xd1936 11y agoThey already had this, only without the server-side processing for Spam filters and Google Now features. The Gmail app in Android has had the ability to bring in other email accounts for months; This seems like the next logical step. Super cool option to have. I wonder if those of us who already have third-party email accounts in the Gmail app will be automatically upgraded to this.
- Touche 11y agoNo support for JMAP accounts?
- grinich 11y agoDo any providers actually support JMAP right now? (Genuinely curious.)
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoDoes linking another e-mail to my Gmail mean that Google will go harvest all of the e-mails from the Inbox of that account in order to deliver targeted ads? I ask because I don't want to link my 15 year-old Hotmail account to it if that's the case. I'll just stay with the web client.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pritam2020 11y agoYahoo mail has done it last year. They even have this on the web client on desktop. http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/10/yo-dawg-i-heard-you-like-ya.. http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/10/yo-dawg-i-heard-you-like-ya....
- andybak 11y agoSo mixed messages again. Is 'Inbox' the next-gen Gmail interface or a hobby project that will get closed down in a year? Momentum has slowed and I've become so dependent on it's workflow I'd be gutted if this was the case. However - I don't believe Google will maintain two email clients in perpetuity. On past experience - they'll fold the functionality of one into the other - partially and imperfectly leaving users irritated once more. Still - it's not like I'd be safe from this anywhere else. Products from smaller companies are in constant danger of aquihire shutdowns or similar. And open-source has still yet to produce UX that's much better than 'parity with the mainstream from a few years ago'.
- collinmanderson 11y agoThe only feature Inbox has that I need in Gmail is "snooze". If they bring that over I will stop needing to use inbox.
- jastanton 11y agoI got a toast notification in gmail that asked me to permanently redirect Gmail to Inbox. I believe that answered the questions for myself what direction that are heading.
- yohui 11y agoOnly if you've already used Inbox, correct? It's just a reminder to existing Inbox users. The reverse is not necessary since anyone using Inbox is already familiar with Gmail and using Inbox on purpose.
- bradstewart 11y agoRemember when Google was toasting away to get everyone to use Hangouts for SMS? A few weeks ago, I got a toast in Hangouts asking me to use their new SMS-only Messenger app. You never know.
- dheera 11y agoCan we kill SMS already? Seriously, what's wrong with e-mail? Everyone has data plans nowadays, if not data-only plans, and e-mail is cross-platform. Stop making me have to carry my phone around. I already have my SMS forwarding to my e-mail automatically, and now I'm just waiting for SMS to die.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoI think it's kind of demonstrative of where Google's at with privacy now, that they don't see fit to mention the practical reality that this involves Google indexing and data mining all of your email from another provider. Many of us can make that common sense leap, but in the past Google respected your privacy at least to mention it outright.
- herbst 11y agoI just want to add that you can email forward your domains (for example included free in namecheap domains) and use mailgun to send from them all within Gmail/Inbox. That way you can manage multiple different domains at one place comfortably. (And like the main argument in the article get the superb spam filter)
- muddi900 11y agoCan run a gmail instance on my own server? No? Well thanks but no thanks.
- richardboegli 11y agoThat would be AWESOME, but will never happen.
- muddi900 11y agoGoing by the score I am getting, we are in the minority.
- danpalmer 11y agoI still don't quite understand what's great about Gmail. Everyone goes on and on about how amazing it is, and I'm sitting here having to refresh the page every 5 mins because it won't update, or it's lost a toolbar button. Inbox is worse for me (although I realise probably not for most) because automated emails are usually really important for me as they are telling me something stopped working, but emails from people might not be that important because I get hundreds a day. Between the issues with the Gmail web client, and the problems I have with Inbox, the whole "Gmail" product is one of the worst products that I have to use, and I try to distance myself from it with good email clients as much as I can.
- ossreality 11y ago>I'm sitting here having to refresh the page every 5 mins because it won't update, or it's lost a toolbar button. Yeah, I assume you mean the manual refresh button that has gone missing? Pisses me off too when I know there is new mail. You can click "Inbox" again to force a refresh. Still sucks, but better than reloading the entire page forcibly.
- scrollaway 11y agoNot only that but there's a bug between Gmail and Firefox that causes gmail to freeze on "Loading ..." after a while and not update anymore. I believe that's what GP is referring to and it is infuriating. It's depressing. I switched back from Chromium to Firefox and been getting tons of small issues like this...
- derwiki 11y agoClearly you haven't had the privilege of using Lotus Notes ;-) My anecdotal counterpoint: Gmail is one of the most reliable products I regularly use.
- derefr 11y agoMan, if I could "Gmailify" my Notes inbox (without breaking some IBM proprietary-data rule) that'd be heaven. Verse doesn't come close.
- grinich 11y agoIf folks are looking for an open source alternative to this, you should consider N1 and the Nylas sync engine. With N1, you can run the entire stack yourself, or use our hosted version. Plus, N1 is built to be extended by developers using JavaScript, so you can build anything you want into it. More here: https://nylas.com/n1 https://nylas.com/n1 (I work at Nylas.)
- m6w6 11y agoThat really looks sweet! But glancing over the FAQ, it's not clear to me if it doesn't do IMAP&SMTP with the big players, or if it doesn't feature IMAP&SMTP at all?
- m6w6 11y agoOkay, just tried myself, adding IMAP/SMTP accounts is supported.
- spang 11y agoN1 supports connecting to all the major email providers, as well as pretty much every obscure IMAP server run by your ISP! What's pointed out in the FAQ is just that it uses a cloud service component (also open source! http://github.com/nylas/sync-engine http://github.com/nylas/sync-engine) that we developed first to make it easier to build clients.
- m6w6 11y agoLooks really nice, but what's this creepy right sidebar (which obviously lists wrongly guessed pseudo-contacts)? https://www.dropbox.com/s/bv82he6wlcea3d2/Screenshot%202016-02-18%2000.52.07.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/bv82he6wlcea3d2/Screenshot%202016-... Looks like it cannot be disabled?
- grinich 11y agoYou can click the button in the top right to close it. Right now that data comes from FullContact. If it's wrong, you can write them to dispute/update it. https://support.fullcontact.com/knowledgebase/articles/472669-how-do-i-report-bad-data https://support.fullcontact.com/knowledgebase/articles/47266...
- andersonmvd 11y ago"Gmailify : The best of Gmail, without an gmail address" because for Google doesn't matter if you use @gmail or not. What matters is the permission to read your inbox and harvest your messages. Please prove me I'm wrong.
- awqrre 11y agoof course that is why... how could they provide these features otherwise...
- joelrunyon 11y agoWell...and sort out those pesky newsletters that you signed up for so they can starting charging senders to hit your main inbox. Just waiting for it...
- jlarocco 11y agoUgh, I really hate to complain about this, but "an gmail address" in the HN headline is hurting my brain. Is it at all possible to make it "an @gmail address" to match the article?
- eachro 11y agoOne of my aunt uses a yahoo mail account that I periodically maintain for her. It's unbelievable how much spam makes it through their filters. I'm talking about stuff that ends up in your inbox, not your spam folder. I'm looking forward to gmailifying it for her.
- tgb 11y agoOTOH, I get emails sent to my spam box in Gmail despite being replies to messages that I sent to people that I conversed with multiple times before.
- ForHackernews 11y agoShorter: "Let us read your email, even if you don't use a gmail address."
- finishingmove 11y ago"Gmailify links your existing account to Gmail" -- okaaay. At least it's stated clearly in this case. The whole merge-with-Google thing (which they've also been known to do as opt-out, albeit not in this particular case) is exactly the reason why I'm avoiding a lot of Google's services, and why I respect (and trust) Microsoft more in recent years. It just saddens me that Outlook for Android is so bad in some things, it's basically unusable (e.g. you can't follow links from emails).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoBecause it's opt-in, not opt-out.
- finishingmove 11y agoI did not say this feature is opt-out.
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoHuh? But your comment says: > but this "opt-out, merge-with-Google" thing is exactly the reason why I'm avoiding a lot of Google's services It's opt-in, you call it an "opt-out, merge-with-Google" thing. How is that not calling it opt-out? Your comment or at least its intent is confusing.
- finishingmove 11y agoYou're right, I did actually write that although I did not mean to imply that this particular thing is opt-out. Corrected now, thank you.
- finishingmove 11y agoAlthough, if activating this feature doesn't explicitly warn you that they're merging your account(s) with a Google/Gmail account, then it's worse than an opt-out.
- gloves 11y agoHonestly, I only use gmail because I have to - I find outlook a far better interface.
- tonylemesmer 11y agoIts not working for me on my own hosted email. There is no "gmailify" option. Am I missing something or does gmailify ONLY work for hosted-non gmail accounts e.g. Yahoo, Outlook etc. ?