9 ms·

Bringing AMP to Gmail

118 points by artsandsci 9y ago

rinze 9y ago
> This new spec will be a powerful way for developers to create more engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences. Thanks, mutt, for sparing me all this pain.
siavash 9y ago
What really are the long term motivations for Google to promote and push AMP so much?
- petard 9y ago
  My guess is owning the user time, e.g if you read article via AMP you don't even visit the original website anymore. Same with providing answers directly in the search results.
- arkitaip 9y ago
  Total eco system control, offering advertisers and companies more ways to market and sell, being able to push their own ad platform and ads.
- oldpond 9y ago
  Get 'em hooked on something 'free', then monetize it. Rinse and repeat. Just like they are building a browser that only blocks the 'annoying ads', now they are designing their email to let advertising through. So much for 'don't be evil'.
  - siavash 9y ago
    Things can be both monetized and 'free' and I don't think it necessarily has to be evil simply therefore. What I'm curious about is how they intend/could monetize it? AMP is afaik an open web format, what's the "get 'em hooked" part here? Is it just a defensive play against Facebook's Instant Articles?
- Eridrus 9y ago
  The long term benefits are that they stem the bleeding of everything moving inside mobile apps. They need content on the web to remain useful and developers have shown they're unable to make good mobile experiences themselves. I think this particular move is more tactical than strategic. I think it provides a better experience for users and keeps Pinterest, one of the main AMP users, happy with Google.
pmlnr 9y ago
I genuinely fear the future of email. Email is still the only piece of communication you can own, from top to bottom, from running the service to owning the domain[^1] it runs on. You were able to send anyone email, regardless of rank, location, social status. Google (and recently, Outlook) is taking all of it away. It's putting mail from people not on your contact list in spam[^3]; it's by default blaclisting IPs within certain range[^2]; now it's bringing it's own format as well. Is this embrace, extend, extinguish, Google style? [^1]: let's not get into the problem of DNS never really being owned, only rented, for now [^2]: https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Microsoft_Blacklist/en https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Microsoft_Blacklist/en [^3]: only experienced it, friends did as well, but I don't have proof.
- randomString1 9y ago
  Email is already fucked. In my experience Gmail often failed to receive emails from services like Yandex and Zoho. Plenty of people here that setup their own servers, and know what they are doing, getting randomly blacklisted. Maybe it's fine if email is not central to your life or business but if there's even a, let's say, 10% chance of my emails not getting delivered to Mr Google I have no other option than to bend the knee.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    On the other hand, I’ve had only good experiences with self-hosting my email. I’ve never had issues with being blacklisted or anything. But I’ve been sending with SPF + DKIM + DMARC + ADSP all configured and enabled since day one, and with TLS transport for all sent emails. That usually gives a major boost in trustworthiness.
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      This matches my experience as well. I rarely if ever get sent to a spam folder. And afaik, I've never been blacklisted after ~5 years.
      - 9y ago
Aaargh20318 9y ago
How about offering an opt-out for AMP before piling on more crap ?
- jonmarkgo 9y ago
  I noticed that AMP has recently started adding 'apps' to my launcher in Android. I visited Vimeo.com in mobile Chrome and then suddenly a Vimeo app icon with a little AMP symbol showed up in my launcher without any opt-in.
  - ReverseCold 9y ago
    I think that's Android instant apps, not amp. It's a new Android feature that let's you use supported websites in their native app without having to download the app. I'm not sure why it showed up on your home screen; it's not supposed to do that. What phone/launcher/Android version are you using?
  - yorby 9y ago
    sounds like an easy way to auto-install malware
bluedino 9y ago
No, no, no. Google is trying to turn Gmail into a platform.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- guitarbill 9y ago
  Seems like they didn't get the message with Google+.
therealmarv 9y ago
So with AMP for email can I run timer based or mouse movement based modifying email contents??? When yes: spam mails will love it.
- strictnein 9y ago
  And based on Google's prioritization of AMP results in search, I wonder if they'll offer some sort of benefit to emails supporting AMP? If so, spammers will be the first ones on board. Want to see some examples of the most fully configured SPF, DKIM, etc records? Look at spam. The big boys take advantage of it all.
- adewale 9y ago
  It's AMP so you won't be able to run (your own) Javascript so that kind of thing shouldn't be possible.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Pretty sure AMP only let's you use whitelisted components, not arbitrary JavaScript.
dannyw 9y ago
With AMP for Email, Google is keeping users within Gmail when when they’re interacting with your website or service. The strategy of Google / AMP is clear: using its monopoly to convert the open web into properties of Google. AMP is as “open” as Adobe Flash (Flex, etc) is open. Sure, it may he open source, but it is encumbered by license keys (see: AMP Cache), special privileges (again see: Google search cache), and development totally in control by Google.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  It's like we're back in the days of AOL keywords
  - ramses0 9y ago
    Wouldn't that be a bitter end for google?
- shostack 9y ago
  I wonder what this will do to third party conversion tracking. Email is a primary marketing channel for many businesses with Gmail as a primary email client of their audiences.
  - yellow_postit 9y ago
    Ensure that the conversion tracking is done through google properties
    - shostack 9y ago
      Which is an absolutely massive advantage for them from an auction pricing standpoint (knowing more of what people are willing to pay), and competitive standpoint against the likes of Adobe and others.
odammit 9y ago
Ok I fold. I’m switching back to regular old postal mail.
- carlivar 9y ago
  You can also fax memos. For intra office, pneumatic tubes.
  - odammit 9y ago
    Notes on paper airplanes. I guess that’s the UDP way. Actually I suppose the post office is the UDP way too.
  - odammit 9y ago
    Some start up somewhere has pneumatic tubes and some little beautiful nerd is hacking them into something cool and/or funny. I’m a little jealous.
  - 77pt77 9y ago
    For those not in the know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    If you need QoS, there's an IP over Avian Carrier spec that'll work: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 No AMP support too, which is a huge plus.
- thesmallestcat 9y ago
  Smoke signals here, can't trust the postman either.
omw192168 9y ago
hate, hate, hate. blar blar
nugi 9y ago
Can you just mine my data unobtrousively instead of screwing with every service I stupidly provide my lifes details? Already migrating, not because of the obvious privacy issues, but useability. How can a company that profits by knowing what people think and talk about, see so little of the house collapsing around them? Even free isn't cheap enough, it has to work. I think I speak for a fair number of HN readers when I say, Literally everything google offered 10-15 years ago was better. Talk, gmail, voice, search (with booleans!). Its all a wasteland now, begotten and forgotten for sweet advertising and big data deals.
- ccarter84 9y ago
  YES - the broken booleans! Also, RIP talk. Hangouts is a joke and is what killed me using it
- halflings 9y ago
  > I think I speak for a fair number of HN readers when I say, Literally everything google offered 10-15 years ago was better. Talk, gmail, voice, search (with booleans!). Its all a wasteland now, begotten and forgotten for sweet advertising and big data deals. Eh... I think you should speak for yourself and convince with arguments instead. How are these products worse? Search gives much more relevant users, pretty much killed SEO as a thing, now using page size and performance as metrics to push mobile-friendly websites higher when you're on your mobile. Gmail is just significantly better in every way.. including privacy: They stopped using emails for ads. [0] Of course, RIP Google Talk, but Voice is much better now, with a VoIP option coming soon.[1] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/.../google-will-stop-reading-your-emails-for-gmail-ads https://www.bloomberg.com/.../google-will-stop-reading-your-... [1] https://9to5google.com/2017/01/26/google-voice-voip-integration-update/ https://9to5google.com/2017/01/26/google-voice-voip-integrat...
- protomyth 9y ago
  Well, since Google Voice blocked at least one of the US tribal community colleges to save Google some money, I cannot say I was ever a fan. It pointed to me a lack of any sense of empathy. I know we talk about Oracle being a lawnmower, but Google has a lot of parts that trend that way.
hungerstrike 9y ago
And just yesterday I was searching for a way to get further away from AMP. For now, the only way is to always ask for the Desktop Site when I search. Unfortunately, iOS Safari doesn't allow me to set this per site and I have to do it manually every single time I search.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Use Firefox Mobile, Google hasn’t deployed AMP for that yet.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    But Bing has.
  - hungerstrike 9y ago
    You can't really use a third party browser on iOS because Apple forces all links from their irreplaceable apps to open in Safari.
mtgx 9y ago
"We heard you like our browser, so we put another browser inside our browser." And you thought email phishing was bad now. Wait until this thing goes live.
tandav 9y ago
The UI of site is total crap full of dickbars.
- mediumdeviation 9y ago
  It's amazing how the world's largest internet company cannot build a good blog. I don't know why Google is so insecure it thinks it needs to resort to the same tactics used by third-rate blogspam sites to keep users reading their blog posts. This is what the site looks like with both sticky bars open on my 900px high screen. This is atrocious. https://i.imgur.com/o5hcENG.png https://i.imgur.com/o5hcENG.png
aerique 9y ago
I gave up reading that page with all the animations going on.
odammit 9y ago
I’m curious, what you all think the future of email is? I am finding that I use it less and less each year. How much are you using it compared to previous years? - My friend communication is done almost strictly through messaging services - work communication is done through Slack and Jira (yuck) I feel like email for me has become this awkward auth-proxy. It’s how I magic link in, “confirm” who I am, reset my password, or get spammed by marketers.
- OberstKrueger 9y ago
  I use e-mail just as much today as I did 10-15 years ago. Some communication takes place in real-time messaging services, but e-mail is still useful for long-form communication, and less timely messages. IMing can't replace e-mail for me for all purposes.
  - crustyapple 9y ago
    My experience has been similar. IM is nice for quick questions when the other user is at their desk, but for anything important it has to be done over email/paper.
- SquareWheel 9y ago
  I use email every day. I'm not limited by characters. Sending an image doesn't cost a fortune. It's much easier to attach files like zips, and to extract them on the other end. What's the advantage of SMS? It just seems like a poorly stripped down email service, with more control from carriers.
  - odammit 9y ago
    I don’t SMS coworkers, I usually have slack threads or channels.
- l9k 9y ago
  Email are used everyday, especially at work. The Google post mentions a report in which they claim that 270 billion emails are sent per day by 3.1B users, and usage is still increasing. Slack, with 6M daily users, is not even close.
yread 9y ago
Does anyone else see glitches in the GIF of booking.com (specifically the Arc de Triomphe)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
whyagaindavid 9y ago
For all the criticism of Google/Gmail/AMP at least the spec is open. AMP allows me to browse with minimal data.
- badwebsite 9y ago
  That's ridiculous. You can build non-bloated websites without using AMP. Web developers are just trash.
- tho9Ohx1eo 9y ago
  I guess not everyone is having tens on gigabytes for 5€ like me, but hell, even if the megabyte is more expensive than gold in some fucked up economy does that mean everyone should sell their soul to google and the likes?
  - whyagaindavid 9y ago
    1.Everyone need not sell their soul to Google but the majority did it 2. The same argument stands for Facebook. I wish there was a neutral platform but... 3. I wish someone like apple will take on AMP or search or cloud storage or cross-platform email but apple is interested in keeping people locked. Heck, I can't reliably find a client for pics, calendar except iOS or macos device...
- hollerith 9y ago
  The spec for at least one MS-Word format is open, too, but that does not mean I would like for every email sent to me through gmail to be in that format. I interpret this announcement from Google as a sign that the default format for emails sent from gmail, which is now basically plain text (and HTML via MIME's multipart/alternative) will some day, when Google is ready, change to some complicated thing that requires the user to consent to Javascript's running on his machine before he can view his message, same as it is now for web pages. It would be prohibitively tedious for me to persuade everyone who send me email through gmail to go into gmail's settings and switch the format back to plain text. And even if I succeed, Google has at its disposal various dark patterns, e.g., resetting the setting back to AMP every now and then (which please note would not be noticeable by the sender unless I tell him).
jwilk 9y ago
I read the post and I have still no idea what is this about. They say that the spec is available. But where? They link to https://github.com/ampproject https://github.com/ampproject , which is just a list of projects, none of which seem relevant.
- adewale 9y ago
  The spec is here: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13457 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13457
  - jwilk 9y ago
    Thanks! I see the link in the blog post is now fixed.
- SippinLean 9y ago
  >To get developer preview access to AMP for email in Gmail, sign up on our site. It's a subset of existing AMP components.
antirez 9y ago
I wonder if there is some part of the tech stack Google is not willing to mess with, imposing solutions because of the user base and not necessarily by technical merits and sane complexity/gain balance.
oldpond 9y ago
Google brings their advertising machine to email. Goodbye gmail. Can't say I'm surprised.
jnordwick 9y ago
So this is just blantantly breaking email for non Gmail clients is sounds like. I was actually already thinking or trying anther email provider out of curiosity anyways. The problem is gmail is already so locked into my phone and everything. I can't even completely remove gmail from there either. Meta: My top two stories on HN right now are Google press releases. Just rename HN to Google News are be done with it.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  FWIW, Google stories are almost always newsworthy, and hence, belong highly positioned on HN. Though from the comments, at least on this one: Most of the comments are negative/critical. Bad news is also news.
fancyfacebook 9y ago
AOL 2.0
77pt77 9y ago
The potential for malicious abuse of this is almost endless. I feel very sorry for the state of email. An interesting concept with very antiquated technology that is getting more and more centralized. Having a personal/corporate server and interacting with the big boys (Google, Microsoft, even yahoo) is getting more and more difficult.
l9k 9y ago
Looks like a way to show more dynamic ads
amiga-workbench 9y ago
Jesus christ, can we pack it in with the hyperactive-web I just want to read a bit of text without the page screaming and dancing.
russell_h 9y ago
This looks like an an evolution of the action buttons Gmail has supported for years: https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/05/take-action-right-from-inbox.html https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/05/take-action-right-from-...
CodeSheikh 9y ago
Would I be able to unsubscribe directly from whatever marketing email I received instead of marking it as spam and have Gmail AI suggesting me to unsubscribe or me having to go to the unsubscribe web-page of the marketing campaign?
newscracker 9y ago
For those who are frustrated by this, if you can, please show others that there are other options (just like you have done with DuckDuckGo) and switch to any of these (listing only those that are cheap enough to have multiple mailboxes without spending several hundred dollars a year): 1. Posteo.de 2. Mailbox.org 3. Tutanota.com 4. Protonmail.ch I know some people can run their own setup. The above are for people who cannot or do not want to do it.
- avtar 9y ago
  Fastmail is a great alternative as well.
  - newscracker 9y ago
    I've heard many people say good things about Fastmail, and I'm sure its worth the praise it gets. But I personally don't recommend it because it gets very expensive if you need more than a couple of mailboxes. The services I listed, at least Posteo and Mailbox, are significantly cheaper for those who need separate mailboxes (not aliases on a single account). I moved from Gmail/Yahoo more than a year ago for just two of my primary mailboxes (one personal and one shared) and it costs me a fraction of what a single mailbox on Fastmail would.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  Yep, I think this is the final straw for me too. Will spend the weekend looking into alternatives and close down my G Suite account.
crtasm 9y ago
Will adblockers be able to prevent the AMP version being displayed, at least? Or does it look like gmail web interface will only serve that version?
asah 9y ago
Why the negativity? If google doesn't innovate in open web technologies, then closed systems will win, in this case Slack. Sure, bummer that they used the much-maligned "AMP" name and double-bummer that they didn't build a coalition among email client-writers first, incl Outlook. My assumption us that AMP4email will get replaced by a truly-open standard (aka multi-vendor support), following the same path as Google's early R&D efforts in browser local storage and improved networking. Google: what I'd really like to see is a way to authenticate between email sender-receiver (perhaps a one-time, OAuth-like dance with a website?). In addition to nuking certain forms of phishing attacks, users could [reasonably safely] conduct e-commerce inside the email client (much faster, more consistent etc)... kinda like wechat, etc.
- ken 9y ago
  > If google doesn't innovate in open web technologies, then closed systems will win Besides the question of relevance (why do we care about web technologies in email, when studies have shown that most people prefer plain text, anyway?), this sounds like a straight up Appeal to Consequences.
dbolgheroni 9y ago
> AMP for Email will also make it possible for information to easily kept up-to-date, so emails never get stale and the content is accurate when a user looks at it. So it seems like a regular webpage but within Gmail.
jacquesm 9y ago
> engaging, interactive, and actionable I don't want my emails to be 'engaging, interactive, and actionable', I just want them delivered with a minimum of fuss and preferably in plain text. All this marketing bullshit is getting old.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
andy_ppp 9y ago
I am very down on AMP. I did indeed think they would try to embrace and extend the web to be inside their own walled garden. If I was a publisher who didn't control my content or even Pinterest I would be genuinely terrified.
strict9 9y ago
And this blog post is a brilliant metaphor for why I stopped clicking amp links a long time ago. A much larger than necessary header that bounces up and down as you scroll, with a insanely massive related articles sticky footer. AMP is a scourge on the web and now they want to extend the plague to email? Please Google, just leave email alone.
activatedgeek 9y ago
Does somebody know what is happening with Inbox by Gmail? Every new feature seems to be done with Gmail and Inbox seems like out of development or dormant.

118 points by artsandsci 9y ago

> This new spec will be a powerful way for developers to create more engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences. Thanks, mutt, for sparing me all this pain.

siavash 9y ago

What really are the long term motivations for Google to promote and push AMP so much?

petard 9y ago
My guess is owning the user time, e.g if you read article via AMP you don't even visit the original website anymore. Same with providing answers directly in the search results.
arkitaip 9y ago
Total eco system control, offering advertisers and companies more ways to market and sell, being able to push their own ad platform and ads.
oldpond 9y ago
Get 'em hooked on something 'free', then monetize it. Rinse and repeat. Just like they are building a browser that only blocks the 'annoying ads', now they are designing their email to let advertising through. So much for 'don't be evil'.
- siavash 9y ago
  Things can be both monetized and 'free' and I don't think it necessarily has to be evil simply therefore. What I'm curious about is how they intend/could monetize it? AMP is afaik an open web format, what's the "get 'em hooked" part here? Is it just a defensive play against Facebook's Instant Articles?
Eridrus 9y ago
The long term benefits are that they stem the bleeding of everything moving inside mobile apps. They need content on the web to remain useful and developers have shown they're unable to make good mobile experiences themselves. I think this particular move is more tactical than strategic. I think it provides a better experience for users and keeps Pinterest, one of the main AMP users, happy with Google.

pmlnr 9y ago

I genuinely fear the future of email. Email is still the only piece of communication you can own, from top to bottom, from running the service to owning the domain[^1] it runs on. You were able to send anyone email, regardless of rank, location, social status. Google (and recently, Outlook) is taking all of it away. It's putting mail from people not on your contact list in spam[^3]; it's by default blaclisting IPs within certain range[^2]; now it's bringing it's own format as well. Is this embrace, extend, extinguish, Google style? [^1]: let's not get into the problem of DNS never really being owned, only rented, for now [^2]: https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Microsoft_Blacklist/en https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Microsoft_Blacklist/en [^3]: only experienced it, friends did as well, but I don't have proof.

randomString1 9y ago
Email is already fucked. In my experience Gmail often failed to receive emails from services like Yandex and Zoho. Plenty of people here that setup their own servers, and know what they are doing, getting randomly blacklisted. Maybe it's fine if email is not central to your life or business but if there's even a, let's say, 10% chance of my emails not getting delivered to Mr Google I have no other option than to bend the knee.
- kuschku 9y ago
  On the other hand, I’ve had only good experiences with self-hosting my email. I’ve never had issues with being blacklisted or anything. But I’ve been sending with SPF + DKIM + DMARC + ADSP all configured and enabled since day one, and with TLS transport for all sent emails. That usually gives a major boost in trustworthiness.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    This matches my experience as well. I rarely if ever get sent to a spam folder. And afaik, I've never been blacklisted after ~5 years.
    - 9y ago

Aaargh20318 9y ago

How about offering an opt-out for AMP before piling on more crap ?

jonmarkgo 9y ago
I noticed that AMP has recently started adding 'apps' to my launcher in Android. I visited Vimeo.com in mobile Chrome and then suddenly a Vimeo app icon with a little AMP symbol showed up in my launcher without any opt-in.
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  I think that's Android instant apps, not amp. It's a new Android feature that let's you use supported websites in their native app without having to download the app. I'm not sure why it showed up on your home screen; it's not supposed to do that. What phone/launcher/Android version are you using?
- yorby 9y ago
  sounds like an easy way to auto-install malware

bluedino 9y ago

No, no, no. Google is trying to turn Gmail into a platform.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
guitarbill 9y ago
Seems like they didn't get the message with Google+.

therealmarv 9y ago

So with AMP for email can I run timer based or mouse movement based modifying email contents??? When yes: spam mails will love it.

strictnein 9y ago
And based on Google's prioritization of AMP results in search, I wonder if they'll offer some sort of benefit to emails supporting AMP? If so, spammers will be the first ones on board. Want to see some examples of the most fully configured SPF, DKIM, etc records? Look at spam. The big boys take advantage of it all.
adewale 9y ago
It's AMP so you won't be able to run (your own) Javascript so that kind of thing shouldn't be possible.
Eridrus 9y ago
Pretty sure AMP only let's you use whitelisted components, not arbitrary JavaScript.

dannyw 9y ago

With AMP for Email, Google is keeping users within Gmail when when they’re interacting with your website or service. The strategy of Google / AMP is clear: using its monopoly to convert the open web into properties of Google. AMP is as “open” as Adobe Flash (Flex, etc) is open. Sure, it may he open source, but it is encumbered by license keys (see: AMP Cache), special privileges (again see: Google search cache), and development totally in control by Google.

djsumdog 9y ago
It's like we're back in the days of AOL keywords
- ramses0 9y ago
  Wouldn't that be a bitter end for google?
shostack 9y ago
I wonder what this will do to third party conversion tracking. Email is a primary marketing channel for many businesses with Gmail as a primary email client of their audiences.
- yellow_postit 9y ago
  Ensure that the conversion tracking is done through google properties
  - shostack 9y ago
    Which is an absolutely massive advantage for them from an auction pricing standpoint (knowing more of what people are willing to pay), and competitive standpoint against the likes of Adobe and others.

odammit 9y ago

Ok I fold. I’m switching back to regular old postal mail.

carlivar 9y ago
You can also fax memos. For intra office, pneumatic tubes.
- odammit 9y ago
  Notes on paper airplanes. I guess that’s the UDP way. Actually I suppose the post office is the UDP way too.
- odammit 9y ago
  Some start up somewhere has pneumatic tubes and some little beautiful nerd is hacking them into something cool and/or funny. I’m a little jealous.
- 77pt77 9y ago
  For those not in the know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  If you need QoS, there's an IP over Avian Carrier spec that'll work: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 No AMP support too, which is a huge plus.
thesmallestcat 9y ago
Smoke signals here, can't trust the postman either.

omw192168 9y ago

hate, hate, hate. blar blar

nugi 9y ago

Can you just mine my data unobtrousively instead of screwing with every service I stupidly provide my lifes details? Already migrating, not because of the obvious privacy issues, but useability. How can a company that profits by knowing what people think and talk about, see so little of the house collapsing around them? Even free isn't cheap enough, it has to work. I think I speak for a fair number of HN readers when I say, Literally everything google offered 10-15 years ago was better. Talk, gmail, voice, search (with booleans!). Its all a wasteland now, begotten and forgotten for sweet advertising and big data deals.

ccarter84 9y ago
YES - the broken booleans! Also, RIP talk. Hangouts is a joke and is what killed me using it
halflings 9y ago
> I think I speak for a fair number of HN readers when I say, Literally everything google offered 10-15 years ago was better. Talk, gmail, voice, search (with booleans!). Its all a wasteland now, begotten and forgotten for sweet advertising and big data deals. Eh... I think you should speak for yourself and convince with arguments instead. How are these products worse? Search gives much more relevant users, pretty much killed SEO as a thing, now using page size and performance as metrics to push mobile-friendly websites higher when you're on your mobile. Gmail is just significantly better in every way.. including privacy: They stopped using emails for ads. [0] Of course, RIP Google Talk, but Voice is much better now, with a VoIP option coming soon.[1] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/.../google-will-stop-reading-your-emails-for-gmail-ads https://www.bloomberg.com/.../google-will-stop-reading-your-... [1] https://9to5google.com/2017/01/26/google-voice-voip-integration-update/ https://9to5google.com/2017/01/26/google-voice-voip-integrat...
protomyth 9y ago
Well, since Google Voice blocked at least one of the US tribal community colleges to save Google some money, I cannot say I was ever a fan. It pointed to me a lack of any sense of empathy. I know we talk about Oracle being a lawnmower, but Google has a lot of parts that trend that way.

hungerstrike 9y ago

And just yesterday I was searching for a way to get further away from AMP. For now, the only way is to always ask for the Desktop Site when I search. Unfortunately, iOS Safari doesn't allow me to set this per site and I have to do it manually every single time I search.

kuschku 9y ago
Use Firefox Mobile, Google hasn’t deployed AMP for that yet.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  But Bing has.
- hungerstrike 9y ago
  You can't really use a third party browser on iOS because Apple forces all links from their irreplaceable apps to open in Safari.

mtgx 9y ago

"We heard you like our browser, so we put another browser inside our browser." And you thought email phishing was bad now. Wait until this thing goes live.

tandav 9y ago

The UI of site is total crap full of dickbars.

mediumdeviation 9y ago
It's amazing how the world's largest internet company cannot build a good blog. I don't know why Google is so insecure it thinks it needs to resort to the same tactics used by third-rate blogspam sites to keep users reading their blog posts. This is what the site looks like with both sticky bars open on my 900px high screen. This is atrocious. https://i.imgur.com/o5hcENG.png https://i.imgur.com/o5hcENG.png

aerique 9y ago

I gave up reading that page with all the animations going on.

odammit 9y ago

I’m curious, what you all think the future of email is? I am finding that I use it less and less each year. How much are you using it compared to previous years? - My friend communication is done almost strictly through messaging services - work communication is done through Slack and Jira (yuck) I feel like email for me has become this awkward auth-proxy. It’s how I magic link in, “confirm” who I am, reset my password, or get spammed by marketers.

OberstKrueger 9y ago
I use e-mail just as much today as I did 10-15 years ago. Some communication takes place in real-time messaging services, but e-mail is still useful for long-form communication, and less timely messages. IMing can't replace e-mail for me for all purposes.
- crustyapple 9y ago
  My experience has been similar. IM is nice for quick questions when the other user is at their desk, but for anything important it has to be done over email/paper.
SquareWheel 9y ago
I use email every day. I'm not limited by characters. Sending an image doesn't cost a fortune. It's much easier to attach files like zips, and to extract them on the other end. What's the advantage of SMS? It just seems like a poorly stripped down email service, with more control from carriers.
- odammit 9y ago
  I don’t SMS coworkers, I usually have slack threads or channels.
l9k 9y ago
Email are used everyday, especially at work. The Google post mentions a report in which they claim that 270 billion emails are sent per day by 3.1B users, and usage is still increasing. Slack, with 6M daily users, is not even close.

yread 9y ago

Does anyone else see glitches in the GIF of booking.com (specifically the Arc de Triomphe)

deleted 9y ago

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whyagaindavid 9y ago

For all the criticism of Google/Gmail/AMP at least the spec is open. AMP allows me to browse with minimal data.

badwebsite 9y ago
That's ridiculous. You can build non-bloated websites without using AMP. Web developers are just trash.
tho9Ohx1eo 9y ago
I guess not everyone is having tens on gigabytes for 5€ like me, but hell, even if the megabyte is more expensive than gold in some fucked up economy does that mean everyone should sell their soul to google and the likes?
- whyagaindavid 9y ago
  1.Everyone need not sell their soul to Google but the majority did it 2. The same argument stands for Facebook. I wish there was a neutral platform but... 3. I wish someone like apple will take on AMP or search or cloud storage or cross-platform email but apple is interested in keeping people locked. Heck, I can't reliably find a client for pics, calendar except iOS or macos device...
hollerith 9y ago
The spec for at least one MS-Word format is open, too, but that does not mean I would like for every email sent to me through gmail to be in that format. I interpret this announcement from Google as a sign that the default format for emails sent from gmail, which is now basically plain text (and HTML via MIME's multipart/alternative) will some day, when Google is ready, change to some complicated thing that requires the user to consent to Javascript's running on his machine before he can view his message, same as it is now for web pages. It would be prohibitively tedious for me to persuade everyone who send me email through gmail to go into gmail's settings and switch the format back to plain text. And even if I succeed, Google has at its disposal various dark patterns, e.g., resetting the setting back to AMP every now and then (which please note would not be noticeable by the sender unless I tell him).

jwilk 9y ago

I read the post and I have still no idea what is this about. They say that the spec is available. But where? They link to https://github.com/ampproject https://github.com/ampproject , which is just a list of projects, none of which seem relevant.

adewale 9y ago
The spec is here: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13457 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13457
- jwilk 9y ago
  Thanks! I see the link in the blog post is now fixed.
SippinLean 9y ago
>To get developer preview access to AMP for email in Gmail, sign up on our site. It's a subset of existing AMP components.

antirez 9y ago

I wonder if there is some part of the tech stack Google is not willing to mess with, imposing solutions because of the user base and not necessarily by technical merits and sane complexity/gain balance.

oldpond 9y ago

Google brings their advertising machine to email. Goodbye gmail. Can't say I'm surprised.

jnordwick 9y ago

So this is just blantantly breaking email for non Gmail clients is sounds like. I was actually already thinking or trying anther email provider out of curiosity anyways. The problem is gmail is already so locked into my phone and everything. I can't even completely remove gmail from there either. Meta: My top two stories on HN right now are Google press releases. Just rename HN to Google News are be done with it.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
FWIW, Google stories are almost always newsworthy, and hence, belong highly positioned on HN. Though from the comments, at least on this one: Most of the comments are negative/critical. Bad news is also news.

fancyfacebook 9y ago

AOL 2.0

77pt77 9y ago

The potential for malicious abuse of this is almost endless. I feel very sorry for the state of email. An interesting concept with very antiquated technology that is getting more and more centralized. Having a personal/corporate server and interacting with the big boys (Google, Microsoft, even yahoo) is getting more and more difficult.

l9k 9y ago

Looks like a way to show more dynamic ads

amiga-workbench 9y ago

Jesus christ, can we pack it in with the hyperactive-web I just want to read a bit of text without the page screaming and dancing.

russell_h 9y ago

This looks like an an evolution of the action buttons Gmail has supported for years: https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/05/take-action-right-from-inbox.html https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/05/take-action-right-from-...

CodeSheikh 9y ago

Would I be able to unsubscribe directly from whatever marketing email I received instead of marking it as spam and have Gmail AI suggesting me to unsubscribe or me having to go to the unsubscribe web-page of the marketing campaign?

newscracker 9y ago

For those who are frustrated by this, if you can, please show others that there are other options (just like you have done with DuckDuckGo) and switch to any of these (listing only those that are cheap enough to have multiple mailboxes without spending several hundred dollars a year): 1. Posteo.de 2. Mailbox.org 3. Tutanota.com 4. Protonmail.ch I know some people can run their own setup. The above are for people who cannot or do not want to do it.

avtar 9y ago
Fastmail is a great alternative as well.
- newscracker 9y ago
  I've heard many people say good things about Fastmail, and I'm sure its worth the praise it gets. But I personally don't recommend it because it gets very expensive if you need more than a couple of mailboxes. The services I listed, at least Posteo and Mailbox, are significantly cheaper for those who need separate mailboxes (not aliases on a single account). I moved from Gmail/Yahoo more than a year ago for just two of my primary mailboxes (one personal and one shared) and it costs me a fraction of what a single mailbox on Fastmail would.
robin_reala 9y ago
Yep, I think this is the final straw for me too. Will spend the weekend looking into alternatives and close down my G Suite account.

crtasm 9y ago

Will adblockers be able to prevent the AMP version being displayed, at least? Or does it look like gmail web interface will only serve that version?

asah 9y ago

Why the negativity? If google doesn't innovate in open web technologies, then closed systems will win, in this case Slack. Sure, bummer that they used the much-maligned "AMP" name and double-bummer that they didn't build a coalition among email client-writers first, incl Outlook. My assumption us that AMP4email will get replaced by a truly-open standard (aka multi-vendor support), following the same path as Google's early R&D efforts in browser local storage and improved networking. Google: what I'd really like to see is a way to authenticate between email sender-receiver (perhaps a one-time, OAuth-like dance with a website?). In addition to nuking certain forms of phishing attacks, users could [reasonably safely] conduct e-commerce inside the email client (much faster, more consistent etc)... kinda like wechat, etc.

ken 9y ago
> If google doesn't innovate in open web technologies, then closed systems will win Besides the question of relevance (why do we care about web technologies in email, when studies have shown that most people prefer plain text, anyway?), this sounds like a straight up Appeal to Consequences.

dbolgheroni 9y ago

> AMP for Email will also make it possible for information to easily kept up-to-date, so emails never get stale and the content is accurate when a user looks at it. So it seems like a regular webpage but within Gmail.

jacquesm 9y ago

> engaging, interactive, and actionable I don't want my emails to be 'engaging, interactive, and actionable', I just want them delivered with a minimum of fuss and preferably in plain text. All this marketing bullshit is getting old.

deleted 9y ago

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andy_ppp 9y ago

I am very down on AMP. I did indeed think they would try to embrace and extend the web to be inside their own walled garden. If I was a publisher who didn't control my content or even Pinterest I would be genuinely terrified.

strict9 9y ago

And this blog post is a brilliant metaphor for why I stopped clicking amp links a long time ago. A much larger than necessary header that bounces up and down as you scroll, with a insanely massive related articles sticky footer. AMP is a scourge on the web and now they want to extend the plague to email? Please Google, just leave email alone.

activatedgeek 9y ago

Does somebody know what is happening with Inbox by Gmail? Every new feature seems to be done with Gmail and Inbox seems like out of development or dormant.