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> On the hardware token side, security keys are still quite expensive I don't know Elie, a lot of valuable users have iPhones with a great biometric secure enc
by doctorpangloss 8y ago
> On the hardware token side, security keys are still quite expensive
I don't know Elie, a lot of valuable users have iPhones with a great biometric secure enclave implementation. I know you've heard of it--it's like CAPTCHA, except the end user is real (not some tasker) and generates 1,000x more value for the security integrator. It's not the end user's fault Android sucks in this regard.
If Google wanted to, it could extend the IMAP protocol, work with Apple, and make it happen--two factor for everyone. It could also provide Exchange and push too, for free, like it used to, for everyone, but I don't know what happened with that either.
Along with a bunch of other people, Google contributed to Let's Encrypt, a product of the ISRG, by giving ISRG a bunch of money and basically saying, in a determination made by a business person (not a security analyst) in an afternoon, "Okay, the world can have free certificates now, Chrome will be okay with this." That determination, which may have literally taken minutes by some executive to make, has done more for HTTPS adoption than any study or Chrome feature. I'd use that as a model for what you could do to improve security of the end user.
If Gmail isn't interested in improving practical security--if its product managers are narrowly focused on adoption of the iOS app, for tracking purposes, and the delivery of as much content to it as possible for analysis, people will obviously change the way they deliver e-mail. Services already notify you of important messages and require you to login to their websites to read them. It's not zero sum, but given its moat, Google has a lot more to lose.
The end user's experience is frustrated here. But it's not really "thought leadership" to come out and say, "More of whatever Google does, as long as it doesn't interfere with its complex priorities in the reality the end user actually inhabits."