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Gmail is consolidating their dominance with stuff like this. If things start replacing email communication, gmail will just provide it on top which moves us fur

Gmail is consolidating their dominance with stuff like this. If things start replacing email communication, gmail will just provide it on top which moves us further and further from a standards compliant SMTP GUI that email was. I haven't found an email client that reliably renders most html, yet we have addons and soon maybe Android apps in your email.

harigov 9y ago
I guess Microsoft is close behind and probably leading in the number of paying customers. However, a duopoly isn't that much better either. It's unfortunate that the spirit of the internet that resulted in many open technologies is slowly being circumvented by companies seeking to monopolize. Unlike old monopolies, where breaking apart is reasonably easy, these new monopolies are entrenched right from their technology stack.
edraferi 9y ago
I don't think it's quite so gloomy. A lot of cool add-on functionality relies on semantic markup in the email itself [0]. These are open standards by necessity -- any email provider can add support for them. For example, here's the standard for flight reservations [1]. I'm not sure how widely adopted they are, but Microsoft supports at least event discovery [2]. [0] https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/ https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/ [1] http://schema.org/FlightReservation http://schema.org/FlightReservation [2] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Automatically-add-travel-and-package-delivery-events-to-your-calendar-32e5cf0c-3e65-4870-9ff9-df3683d3fc97 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Automatically-add-t... edit: formatting
- duskwuff 9y ago
  Annoyingly, though, these markup features still require explicit approval from Google to function in Gmail. They aren't even usable at all for small sites, as one of Google's approval requirements is a "consistent history of sending a high volume of mail from your domain".
deleted 9y ago
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devmunchies 9y ago
As long as they create standards and allow others to replicate then I don't see a problem. Like Apple with emojis in text messages. But I don't see that happening with advanced email features. It alls happening outside of the email itself ad is part of the email application.

harigov 9y ago

I guess Microsoft is close behind and probably leading in the number of paying customers. However, a duopoly isn't that much better either. It's unfortunate that the spirit of the internet that resulted in many open technologies is slowly being circumvented by companies seeking to monopolize. Unlike old monopolies, where breaking apart is reasonably easy, these new monopolies are entrenched right from their technology stack.

edraferi 9y ago

I don't think it's quite so gloomy. A lot of cool add-on functionality relies on semantic markup in the email itself [0]. These are open standards by necessity -- any email provider can add support for them. For example, here's the standard for flight reservations [1]. I'm not sure how widely adopted they are, but Microsoft supports at least event discovery [2]. [0] https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/ https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/ [1] http://schema.org/FlightReservation http://schema.org/FlightReservation [2] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Automatically-add-travel-and-package-delivery-events-to-your-calendar-32e5cf0c-3e65-4870-9ff9-df3683d3fc97 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Automatically-add-t... edit: formatting

duskwuff 9y ago
Annoyingly, though, these markup features still require explicit approval from Google to function in Gmail. They aren't even usable at all for small sites, as one of Google's approval requirements is a "consistent history of sending a high volume of mail from your domain".

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

devmunchies 9y ago

As long as they create standards and allow others to replicate then I don't see a problem. Like Apple with emojis in text messages. But I don't see that happening with advanced email features. It alls happening outside of the email itself ad is part of the email application.