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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 st

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.
        mirimir 8y ago
        A URL, or embedded content as part of HTML? If it were just a URL, even an HTML-enabled client would show just the link. I assumed that it must be embedded content, which would be rendered as a normal-looking message. Maybe it's both. But even so, I'd just see the link. And generally, I ignore blank messages containing links. Also, it's not uncommon for email list software to strip HTML, and I doubt that it would decode the HTML before doing so.
        ddingus 8y ago
        How do you even use a mailing list properly with this going on? The big deal here is users do not get copies of content, instead notifications content is, or may be available. And that's then. What about searching mail archives? You know just that sort of thing being just a little broken is not an accident. Or it changes. "You told me to fuck off" "Prove it" Message says hugs and kisses. That's gonna happen. Count on it, with lame screenshot battles being "proof."
  - mirimir 8y ago
    And some of us don't follow them, for better security.
- torstenvl 8y ago
  How do you distinguish between this and, say, e-cards? Blue Mountain has been sending e-mail links to ephemeral content since at least the early 2000s.

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.
        mirimir 8y ago
        A URL, or embedded content as part of HTML? If it were just a URL, even an HTML-enabled client would show just the link. I assumed that it must be embedded content, which would be rendered as a normal-looking message. Maybe it's both. But even so, I'd just see the link. And generally, I ignore blank messages containing links. Also, it's not uncommon for email list software to strip HTML, and I doubt that it would decode the HTML before doing so.
        ddingus 8y ago
        How do you even use a mailing list properly with this going on? The big deal here is users do not get copies of content, instead notifications content is, or may be available. And that's then. What about searching mail archives? You know just that sort of thing being just a little broken is not an accident. Or it changes. "You told me to fuck off" "Prove it" Message says hugs and kisses. That's gonna happen. Count on it, with lame screenshot battles being "proof."
- mirimir 8y ago
  And some of us don't follow them, for better security.
torstenvl 8y ago
How do you distinguish between this and, say, e-cards? Blue Mountain has been sending e-mail links to ephemeral content since at least the early 2000s.