6 ms·

Many of my customers use Gmail (mostly as part of a company subscription to Apps) and I have frequent problems with their mail getting lost, classified as spam,

by jwr 8y ago

Many of my customers use Gmail (mostly as part of a company subscription to Apps) and I have frequent problems with their mail getting lost, classified as spam, rejected, filed somewhere, or just difficult to see. I wonder at which point people will start realizing that Gmail is not all it's cracked up to be. Apart from the privacy issues (you basically have to assume that Google is reading all your mail and mining data from it), Gmail treats your mail as their mail: they will do anything they like with it, including hiding it from you. If that sounds like a rant, it is — I am worried about the increasingly centralized nature of E-mail.

Slippery_John 8y ago
They claim that they don't use your emails on gsuite the same way as they use it on gmail proper, but I find it very difficult to trust them on that.
- jnwatson 8y ago
  To betray their paying customers’ trust on the pennies they would make would be a truly boneheaded move.
  - dejejeiuerir 8y ago
    Not everything is about money, you know?
  - 0xffff2 8y ago
    Your post implies that companies (or even just Google in particular) don't make a habit of making truly boneheaded moves. I think that's a pretty difficult position to back up.
  - eitland 8y ago
    Didn't Google do exactly this with school accounts a while ago? Researched briefly and this was the best I found but I have memories of something even more juicy: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/02/google-eff-ftc-privacy-chromebook-gmail-spying-students https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/02/google-ef...
  - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    According to a 2017 Reuters report (most recent I found), G-suite gets them revenue of about 1.3B/year. Advertising revenue is more than 80B/year. It might be scummy, and certainly risky, but you can hardly say it would be boneheaded to risk damaging a $1B segment to improve an $80B segment. Never forget: Google is an advertising company. They're not a hosting company, or a SAAS company, or a phone/laptop company, and certainly not a browser company or a mobile OS company. They may dip their toes in lots of areas, but the core is solidly about advertising.
    - Bluestrike2 8y ago
      Conversely, foregoing additional ad revenue and other benefits of using emails from the relatively few number of G-Suite accounts likely has an incredibly small direct impact on the bottom line. I can't speak for any internal data Google has, but my guess would be that individuals using G-Suite accounts are more likely to use Google services in their personal lives. Any lost benefits or ad revenue would be easy to write off as a negligible loss leader. Heck, with how common G-Suite is used in schools, getting kids used to Gmail early would be a powerful argument on its own. Though writing it out like that kind of feels a bit dirty.
    - hodgesrm 8y ago
      There are plenty of companies that manage to make money from a diverse portfolio. If Google wants to be successful in enterprise offerings they need to set up business units with P&L responsibilities so that they don't conflict with the rest of the business. Or they should spin it out as a separate company. There are lots of ways to solve this problem. Speaking as a long-time G-Suite user the offering currently feels a little lost. It's a bit disappointing considering the initial promise of the product. Aside from personal inconvenience, letting it die would be damaging to Google's ability to sell into enterprise markets.
  - TheTruth321 8y ago
    And yet ....
  - fromthestart 8y ago
    But how much is the data mining worth?
kryogen1c 8y ago
> If that sounds like a rant Not to me, and probably not to anyone else that has to administrate GSuite. I am continually astounded at how lacking in features and management capabilities corporate gmail accounts are. Its a discount office 365 in every way - lower price, lower features, lower usability. It sure seems like google is itching to discontinue.
- josefresco 8y ago
  I've implemented G Suite for over a dozen companies. I have no idea what you're talking about.
erinaceousjones 8y ago
I recently applied to be a volunteer first aider for St John's Ambulance, who are fairly prominent in the UK. It was 2 weeks of no response to my application, until I happened to check my gmail spam folder to discover that SJA had invited me to a selection evening like the day after I'd applied! Marked as "not spam". Further correspondence from them, via the same address, ends up in spam list. Filter seems to be ignoring me reporting the misclassifications. I can't tell whether the spam filter is personalized per user, or whether my reports are drops in the ocean. Either way, I get that feeling that I don't own my own email account either.
- 9dev 8y ago
  A while back, I realized I've missed lots and lots of important mails during about four months - Gmail had suddenly started flagging completely legit mail as spam, even from people I've had contact with previously. I tried flagging those mails appropriately, moved them to the inbox, but that didn't help either. Finally, I wrote a complaint feedback message, and a few days later, my spam filter was back to normal. I assume they put a small fraction of their users in A/B tests for the spam filter and can remove you manually on request. If that is true, it's completely unacceptable. I should probably migrate soon.
  - breakingcups 8y ago
    I think it's optimistic to think that they would have removed you manually. The test probably just ended or the bug was corrected.
- mstade 8y ago
  FWIW I moved to FastMail from Gmail about three years ago and one of my main worries then was that I’d be inundated with spam when I didn’t have google’s filter to keep things clean. Since then I think I’ve only had one spam message come through to my inbox, and one or two that were incorrectly classified as spam. My worries were unfounded, as it turns out. (No affiliation with fastmail, just a customer.)
- user5994461 8y ago
josefresco 8y ago
> I have frequent problems with their mail getting lost, classified as spam, rejected, filed somewhere, or just difficult to see. I have the exact opposite problem. My clients with ISP email, free email, low quality shared hosting email have the problems. My clients with G Suite, and Office365 have no deliverability, spam or reliability problems.
- vidarh 8y ago
  I've had problems with Google putting their own messages to me in the spam folder. The Gmail spam filtering is totally hit and miss - I have had a number of Gmail/Gsuite accounts and the level of deliverability is all over the place. When it's good, it's great. When it isn't, no action you take will prevent it from sending important messages to the spam folder.
  - josefresco 8y ago
    Again, I just haven't seen this. Not just with myself, but with my clients. My latest email issue related to Comcast nuking form submissions from a client website ...randomly. I use "nuked" because unlike Gmail it didn't get delivered to a SPAM folder, it was just ... gone. Not all submissions, just a couple here and there, enough to drive the client crazy, and create mistrust. Issue before that was related to Earthlink (yes that Earthlink) doing the same thing. my solution in that case was to put my G Suite email on the BCC list - guess who got 100% of the form submissions? > This guy Gmail spam filtering is not hit or miss, it's very reliable both from my own experience and my clients, whom typically "upgrade" to solve spam and deliverability issues with other providers.
    - vidarh 8y ago
      > Gmail spam filtering is not hit or miss Yes, it is hit or miss, as our vastly different experiences show. Be happy you've gotten lucky. I have not. And I know I'm not alone as I regularly come across others who get confused when they have their first experience with this, because they used to have the same belief about Gmail as you do.
- 8y ago

by jwr 8y ago

Slippery_John 8y ago

They claim that they don't use your emails on gsuite the same way as they use it on gmail proper, but I find it very difficult to trust them on that.

jnwatson 8y ago
To betray their paying customers’ trust on the pennies they would make would be a truly boneheaded move.
- dejejeiuerir 8y ago
  Not everything is about money, you know?
- 0xffff2 8y ago
  Your post implies that companies (or even just Google in particular) don't make a habit of making truly boneheaded moves. I think that's a pretty difficult position to back up.
- eitland 8y ago
  Didn't Google do exactly this with school accounts a while ago? Researched briefly and this was the best I found but I have memories of something even more juicy: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/02/google-eff-ftc-privacy-chromebook-gmail-spying-students https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/02/google-ef...
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  According to a 2017 Reuters report (most recent I found), G-suite gets them revenue of about 1.3B/year. Advertising revenue is more than 80B/year. It might be scummy, and certainly risky, but you can hardly say it would be boneheaded to risk damaging a $1B segment to improve an $80B segment. Never forget: Google is an advertising company. They're not a hosting company, or a SAAS company, or a phone/laptop company, and certainly not a browser company or a mobile OS company. They may dip their toes in lots of areas, but the core is solidly about advertising.
  - Bluestrike2 8y ago
    Conversely, foregoing additional ad revenue and other benefits of using emails from the relatively few number of G-Suite accounts likely has an incredibly small direct impact on the bottom line. I can't speak for any internal data Google has, but my guess would be that individuals using G-Suite accounts are more likely to use Google services in their personal lives. Any lost benefits or ad revenue would be easy to write off as a negligible loss leader. Heck, with how common G-Suite is used in schools, getting kids used to Gmail early would be a powerful argument on its own. Though writing it out like that kind of feels a bit dirty.
  - hodgesrm 8y ago
    There are plenty of companies that manage to make money from a diverse portfolio. If Google wants to be successful in enterprise offerings they need to set up business units with P&L responsibilities so that they don't conflict with the rest of the business. Or they should spin it out as a separate company. There are lots of ways to solve this problem. Speaking as a long-time G-Suite user the offering currently feels a little lost. It's a bit disappointing considering the initial promise of the product. Aside from personal inconvenience, letting it die would be damaging to Google's ability to sell into enterprise markets.
- TheTruth321 8y ago
  And yet ....
- fromthestart 8y ago
  But how much is the data mining worth?

kryogen1c 8y ago

> If that sounds like a rant Not to me, and probably not to anyone else that has to administrate GSuite. I am continually astounded at how lacking in features and management capabilities corporate gmail accounts are. Its a discount office 365 in every way - lower price, lower features, lower usability. It sure seems like google is itching to discontinue.

josefresco 8y ago
I've implemented G Suite for over a dozen companies. I have no idea what you're talking about.

erinaceousjones 8y ago

I recently applied to be a volunteer first aider for St John's Ambulance, who are fairly prominent in the UK. It was 2 weeks of no response to my application, until I happened to check my gmail spam folder to discover that SJA had invited me to a selection evening like the day after I'd applied! Marked as "not spam". Further correspondence from them, via the same address, ends up in spam list. Filter seems to be ignoring me reporting the misclassifications. I can't tell whether the spam filter is personalized per user, or whether my reports are drops in the ocean. Either way, I get that feeling that I don't own my own email account either.

9dev 8y ago
A while back, I realized I've missed lots and lots of important mails during about four months - Gmail had suddenly started flagging completely legit mail as spam, even from people I've had contact with previously. I tried flagging those mails appropriately, moved them to the inbox, but that didn't help either. Finally, I wrote a complaint feedback message, and a few days later, my spam filter was back to normal. I assume they put a small fraction of their users in A/B tests for the spam filter and can remove you manually on request. If that is true, it's completely unacceptable. I should probably migrate soon.
- breakingcups 8y ago
  I think it's optimistic to think that they would have removed you manually. The test probably just ended or the bug was corrected.
mstade 8y ago
FWIW I moved to FastMail from Gmail about three years ago and one of my main worries then was that I’d be inundated with spam when I didn’t have google’s filter to keep things clean. Since then I think I’ve only had one spam message come through to my inbox, and one or two that were incorrectly classified as spam. My worries were unfounded, as it turns out. (No affiliation with fastmail, just a customer.)
user5994461 8y ago

josefresco 8y ago

> I have frequent problems with their mail getting lost, classified as spam, rejected, filed somewhere, or just difficult to see. I have the exact opposite problem. My clients with ISP email, free email, low quality shared hosting email have the problems. My clients with G Suite, and Office365 have no deliverability, spam or reliability problems.

vidarh 8y ago
I've had problems with Google putting their own messages to me in the spam folder. The Gmail spam filtering is totally hit and miss - I have had a number of Gmail/Gsuite accounts and the level of deliverability is all over the place. When it's good, it's great. When it isn't, no action you take will prevent it from sending important messages to the spam folder.
- josefresco 8y ago
  Again, I just haven't seen this. Not just with myself, but with my clients. My latest email issue related to Comcast nuking form submissions from a client website ...randomly. I use "nuked" because unlike Gmail it didn't get delivered to a SPAM folder, it was just ... gone. Not all submissions, just a couple here and there, enough to drive the client crazy, and create mistrust. Issue before that was related to Earthlink (yes that Earthlink) doing the same thing. my solution in that case was to put my G Suite email on the BCC list - guess who got 100% of the form submissions? > This guy Gmail spam filtering is not hit or miss, it's very reliable both from my own experience and my clients, whom typically "upgrade" to solve spam and deliverability issues with other providers.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    > Gmail spam filtering is not hit or miss Yes, it is hit or miss, as our vastly different experiences show. Be happy you've gotten lucky. I have not. And I know I'm not alone as I regularly come across others who get confused when they have their first experience with this, because they used to have the same belief about Gmail as you do.
8y ago