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It seems you prefer the more "modern" style of relying on Google's online services and Chrome's frequent updates. That's fine, but it's not an objective standar

It seems you prefer the more "modern" style of relying on Google's online services and Chrome's frequent updates. That's fine, but it's not an objective standard. For example, some of us consider a UI that doesn't keep moving around every few weeks to be a feature, not a bug. I have absolutely no problem with a practical tool like Thunderbird still using the same layout it had 5 years ago, if that layout works well. Likewise, some of us consider the separate search box of Firefox to be a plus point. I don't want or need everything I type in a URL bar being sent to Google's mothership, and my screen has ample space for both bars. Meanwhile, I'm getting awfully bored of dealing with customer support issues that come down to someone using Google for their mail and not receiving legitimate messages because of whatever Google have broken, deemed spam, or unilaterally declared not to be acceptable this week. I shudder to think how much time and effort are being wasted like this around the world if everyone else's experience is as negative as ours has been lately.

nkkollaw 10y ago
I find the opposite to be true. Apple Mail and Thunderbird give me a lot of false positives, and usually leave spam right in my inbox. Google—whom I'd assume look at what other users do with an email to figure out what's spam—always manage to filter out unwanted mail and keep legit emails in my inbox. Both Apple Mail and Thunderbird are so dumb that they can't figure out I don't speak Chinese, and even after I mark 100 emails in Chinese as spam and have written 0 emails in Chinese since I've installed the apps, they happily fail to recognise emails in Chinese as spam and let them through.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  Google—whom I'd assume look at what other users do with an email to figure out what's spam—always manage to filter out unwanted mail and keep legit emails in my inbox. Unfortunately, your personal experience doesn't change the fact that Google do classify significant amounts of legitimate mail as spam. It appears that at some point in the somewhat recent past, they may have decided that literally anything new sent from a domain without SPF set up is spam, for example. That is simply broken, but they appear to have excessive spam filtering in other respects as well. We even see things like payment confirmation emails, which we are legally required to send and our customers might actually need, and which are basically factual plain text and a very lightly styled HTML version, getting rejected at times. Personally, I'd rather a few false negatives hit my inbox and click the junk icon for a moment to deal with them than actually important things get lost in junk and opportunities missed as a result. I honestly have lost count of how many times I've seen that happen recently, but it's a lot, and it's almost invariably been a result of excessive spam controls by Google and one or two other big mail services.
  - nkkollaw 10y ago
    > Unfortunately, your personal experience doesn't change the fact that Google do classify significant amounts of legitimate mail as spam. I don't know, it's not happening to me using Google Inbox (not Gmail, have no idea about Gmail).
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  In gmail right now I have 50 emails in the spam folder. About 3 are actual spam. The rest are from automated mailing lists where most of the mails go into the inbox, but it rejects some at random. That's a terrible way for a spam filter to behave. Several of these I specifically have incoming mail filters for, and they still go to spam at random.
  - nkkollaw 10y ago
    I don't know about Gmail, I only use Google Inbox and I get 0 false positives.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      Surely they wouldn't have different spam filters?

nkkollaw 10y ago

I find the opposite to be true. Apple Mail and Thunderbird give me a lot of false positives, and usually leave spam right in my inbox. Google—whom I'd assume look at what other users do with an email to figure out what's spam—always manage to filter out unwanted mail and keep legit emails in my inbox. Both Apple Mail and Thunderbird are so dumb that they can't figure out I don't speak Chinese, and even after I mark 100 emails in Chinese as spam and have written 0 emails in Chinese since I've installed the apps, they happily fail to recognise emails in Chinese as spam and let them through.

Silhouette 10y ago
Google—whom I'd assume look at what other users do with an email to figure out what's spam—always manage to filter out unwanted mail and keep legit emails in my inbox. Unfortunately, your personal experience doesn't change the fact that Google do classify significant amounts of legitimate mail as spam. It appears that at some point in the somewhat recent past, they may have decided that literally anything new sent from a domain without SPF set up is spam, for example. That is simply broken, but they appear to have excessive spam filtering in other respects as well. We even see things like payment confirmation emails, which we are legally required to send and our customers might actually need, and which are basically factual plain text and a very lightly styled HTML version, getting rejected at times. Personally, I'd rather a few false negatives hit my inbox and click the junk icon for a moment to deal with them than actually important things get lost in junk and opportunities missed as a result. I honestly have lost count of how many times I've seen that happen recently, but it's a lot, and it's almost invariably been a result of excessive spam controls by Google and one or two other big mail services.
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  > Unfortunately, your personal experience doesn't change the fact that Google do classify significant amounts of legitimate mail as spam. I don't know, it's not happening to me using Google Inbox (not Gmail, have no idea about Gmail).
Dylan16807 10y ago
In gmail right now I have 50 emails in the spam folder. About 3 are actual spam. The rest are from automated mailing lists where most of the mails go into the inbox, but it rejects some at random. That's a terrible way for a spam filter to behave. Several of these I specifically have incoming mail filters for, and they still go to spam at random.
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  I don't know about Gmail, I only use Google Inbox and I get 0 false positives.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    Surely they wouldn't have different spam filters?