6 ms·

Tell that to Gmail people... Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16830156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16830156

by kome 8y ago

ajross 8y ago
Not sure how message expiry is a standards compliance issue. SMTP, MIME and RFC822 et. al. don't say anything about where, how or if the message gets stored once transmitted.
- cat199 8y ago
  > Not sure how message expiry is a standards compliance issue. using market-influence to build massive scale expectation for a feature which can't actually be supported by the underlying protocol in an effort to 'embrace and extend' is exactly a standards compliance issue, and precisely what led to microsoft's internet explorer being labeled as an antitrust violation.
behringer 8y ago
One of the commenters on that article wrote: > Well, I think this works differently. The email just includes a link to a Google webpage with the email. It’s still just an email sitting in your inbox. It doesn’t remove itself automatically. So it's not a standards issue at all.
- romwell 8y ago
  It's an abuse of the standard. The email standard was built so that you can check your email with a client, and view the contents offline at your convenience, archive, back up, etc. Google's email proposal kills this functionality. When was the last time I used this, you may ask? On Saturday. I was in one of the slot canyons in Utah with zero signal, and, while taking a break, I wrote several emails in my Opera email client, in response to some messages I've procrastinated writing a response to. The trickery is that the sender might think they're sending a message over email to the recipient, whereas they are sending the message to Google's servers over an internal protocol, and are sending a link to the message to the recipient over email.
  - behringer 8y ago
    The email standard allows links in emails.
    - ddingus 8y ago
      You are missing the spirit of the comment. This is not a matter of can it be done and be standard, but whether it should be. That's just as important here.
      - behringer 8y ago
        I'm not missing anything. There's nothing wrong with placing links in emails. The link is good, presumably in and out of gmail, and is clearly a gmail feature, not an email feature. There's no problem here.
        ddingus 8y ago
        When the link is the message, and the user thinks it won't change, or go away, it's a problem.
        mirimir 8y ago
        And when my email client doesn't fetch remote content, it will be a problem :) So maybe I'll be replying "Why did you send me an empty message?" And maybe some email list software will have the same problem.
        behringer 8y ago
        But the email is readable, it has a link to a message online. It is not a change to the standard, since it's in the body, where you can write whatever you like. In fact, it's not even unprecedented, because Cisco has been offering this exact same type of system for years generally for PHI and other sensitive uses.

Tell that to Gmail people... Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16830156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16830156

by kome 8y ago

Tell that to Gmail people... Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16830156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16830156

ajross 8y ago

Not sure how message expiry is a standards compliance issue. SMTP, MIME and RFC822 et. al. don't say anything about where, how or if the message gets stored once transmitted.

cat199 8y ago
> Not sure how message expiry is a standards compliance issue. using market-influence to build massive scale expectation for a feature which can't actually be supported by the underlying protocol in an effort to 'embrace and extend' is exactly a standards compliance issue, and precisely what led to microsoft's internet explorer being labeled as an antitrust violation.

behringer 8y ago

One of the commenters on that article wrote: > Well, I think this works differently. The email just includes a link to a Google webpage with the email. It’s still just an email sitting in your inbox. It doesn’t remove itself automatically. So it's not a standards issue at all.

romwell 8y ago
It's an abuse of the standard. The email standard was built so that you can check your email with a client, and view the contents offline at your convenience, archive, back up, etc. Google's email proposal kills this functionality. When was the last time I used this, you may ask? On Saturday. I was in one of the slot canyons in Utah with zero signal, and, while taking a break, I wrote several emails in my Opera email client, in response to some messages I've procrastinated writing a response to. The trickery is that the sender might think they're sending a message over email to the recipient, whereas they are sending the message to Google's servers over an internal protocol, and are sending a link to the message to the recipient over email.
- behringer 8y ago
  The email standard allows links in emails.
  - ddingus 8y ago
    You are missing the spirit of the comment. This is not a matter of can it be done and be standard, but whether it should be. That's just as important here.
    - behringer 8y ago
      I'm not missing anything. There's nothing wrong with placing links in emails. The link is good, presumably in and out of gmail, and is clearly a gmail feature, not an email feature. There's no problem here.
      - ddingus 8y ago
        When the link is the message, and the user thinks it won't change, or go away, it's a problem.
        mirimir 8y ago
        And when my email client doesn't fetch remote content, it will be a problem :) So maybe I'll be replying "Why did you send me an empty message?" And maybe some email list software will have the same problem.
        behringer 8y ago
        But the email is readable, it has a link to a message online. It is not a change to the standard, since it's in the body, where you can write whatever you like. In fact, it's not even unprecedented, because Cisco has been offering this exact same type of system for years generally for PHI and other sensitive uses.