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Sorry to be the one that has negative feelings about it. Email is one of those rare concepts that is really hard to change or enhance. I can easily see Google

Sorry to be the one that has negative feelings about it. Email is one of those rare concepts that is really hard to change or enhance. I can easily see Google abandoning this feature in 5 years. People need email service just because of the email function, nothing more than that. It's concept clearly has some limitations (attachment sizes, layout inconsistencies and so on) but it also doesn't have any deal-breaker problems. Introducing external services integration to email sounds like taking a huge risk. How people manage their invoices, to-do lists and other stuff is changing faster than ever. These add-ons will require active development all the time to keep themselves up-to-date. As a developer, I wouldn't risk investing in this feature.

phailhaus 10y ago
It sounds like you're against it because there's a huge market for it...
- quickben 10y ago
  Nah he's right. They have a history of axing stuff with 0 care about personal or corporate users. Search 'Google graveyard' , etc. There may be a huge market, but your dev time will earn income for not many months/years. I'd rather see my products live longer than that, and me focusing on growth, than constantly trying to restart development just because Google worries much more about their bottom line, than their users. But, to each his own.
eli 10y ago
An API that might go away in 5 years is much much better than hacking the DOM. I wouldn't base a business around either, but I can think of some fun and useful add-ons I could build
libertymcateer 10y ago
> As a developer, I wouldn't risk investing in this feature. Are you developing or working on anything related to email?
- whizzkid 10y ago
  Pretty often at work actually, yes.
CPLX 10y ago
I had the same reaction as you at the headline, but clicking the article and seeing intuit and salesforce made me rethink slightly. It would indeed be handy to be able to toss a receipt email into quickbooks or a new name on cc into a salesforce contact from webmail. I'm sure there are some other decent uses of the concept.
- whizzkid 10y ago
  Absolutely. I am not saying that these add-ons can not be useful. In fact there are a lot of ideas one can come up with. I just think external email integrations are hard to keep healthy and active.
math0ne 10y ago
I've been panned on here before for saying this, but I really feel everyone should leave email alone. As a spec its already so immensely complicated and embedded that any features you add will only be picked up by a tiny percentage of providers.
- tempestn 10y ago
  Imagine if that advice had been taken pre-gmail though. Not everyone loves it, but for most people, gmail's conversation view is far superior to the default way emails were organized before. And it does this while still interacting seamlessly with other email clients. I don't see gmail as perfect, but that's kind of the point; it's possible we could gain from this kind of experimentation. Afterthought - archiving and snoozing emails are also concepts that weren't around initially, but can be extremely valuable depending on your workflow. I'm sure there are other similar improvements and additions to be found.
  - abraae 10y ago
    Archiving emails was a true game changer. I often email documents to myself for future reference, even though I'm also uploading them to jira, or a wiki, or a shared drive or whatever. The one place I know I can always search all the way back is Gmail.
    - falcolas 10y ago
      Archiving has always been possible via folders and IMAP. What makes it valuable was the gigabytes of storage space and decent webmail client.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    I've come to dislike it more and more. Gmail hides too many details. Thinks like precise timestamps. Things like not surfacing subject changes well enough. Things like a spam filter with immense amounts of false positives. I keep having to fight with gmail in ways I never have to with other mail solutions, to the point were I'm getting very close to abandoning it entirely.
grinich 10y ago
If you're looking for an alternative open source email platform, check out Nylas Mail. It's built in React+ES6 with a rich plugin system. https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail (I work at Nylas.)

phailhaus 10y ago

It sounds like you're against it because there's a huge market for it...

quickben 10y ago
Nah he's right. They have a history of axing stuff with 0 care about personal or corporate users. Search 'Google graveyard' , etc. There may be a huge market, but your dev time will earn income for not many months/years. I'd rather see my products live longer than that, and me focusing on growth, than constantly trying to restart development just because Google worries much more about their bottom line, than their users. But, to each his own.

eli 10y ago

An API that might go away in 5 years is much much better than hacking the DOM. I wouldn't base a business around either, but I can think of some fun and useful add-ons I could build

libertymcateer 10y ago

> As a developer, I wouldn't risk investing in this feature. Are you developing or working on anything related to email?

whizzkid 10y ago
Pretty often at work actually, yes.

CPLX 10y ago

I had the same reaction as you at the headline, but clicking the article and seeing intuit and salesforce made me rethink slightly. It would indeed be handy to be able to toss a receipt email into quickbooks or a new name on cc into a salesforce contact from webmail. I'm sure there are some other decent uses of the concept.

whizzkid 10y ago
Absolutely. I am not saying that these add-ons can not be useful. In fact there are a lot of ideas one can come up with. I just think external email integrations are hard to keep healthy and active.

math0ne 10y ago

I've been panned on here before for saying this, but I really feel everyone should leave email alone. As a spec its already so immensely complicated and embedded that any features you add will only be picked up by a tiny percentage of providers.

tempestn 10y ago
Imagine if that advice had been taken pre-gmail though. Not everyone loves it, but for most people, gmail's conversation view is far superior to the default way emails were organized before. And it does this while still interacting seamlessly with other email clients. I don't see gmail as perfect, but that's kind of the point; it's possible we could gain from this kind of experimentation. Afterthought - archiving and snoozing emails are also concepts that weren't around initially, but can be extremely valuable depending on your workflow. I'm sure there are other similar improvements and additions to be found.
- abraae 10y ago
  Archiving emails was a true game changer. I often email documents to myself for future reference, even though I'm also uploading them to jira, or a wiki, or a shared drive or whatever. The one place I know I can always search all the way back is Gmail.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    Archiving has always been possible via folders and IMAP. What makes it valuable was the gigabytes of storage space and decent webmail client.
- vidarh 10y ago
  I've come to dislike it more and more. Gmail hides too many details. Thinks like precise timestamps. Things like not surfacing subject changes well enough. Things like a spam filter with immense amounts of false positives. I keep having to fight with gmail in ways I never have to with other mail solutions, to the point were I'm getting very close to abandoning it entirely.

grinich 10y ago

If you're looking for an alternative open source email platform, check out Nylas Mail. It's built in React+ES6 with a rich plugin system. https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail (I work at Nylas.)