3 ms·

>in this case people literally trying to give you money! Gmail for Android has 2 core functions: to send and to receive mail. It fails at one of them. (Emails

>in this case people literally trying to give you money! Gmail for Android has 2 core functions: to send and to receive mail. It fails at one of them. (Emails get stuck in its outbox indefinitely - you can force it to send by going into the "outbox" and dragging down to refresh, which is an action that has no button to show it is possible. There is no notification that your mail wasn't sent.) Here is a thread about it: https://support.google.com/mail/thread/3130686?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/thread/3130686?hl=en How is it possible for an app that has 2 functions, to fail to do one of them? This is like a salt and pepper set where the pepper side has no holes - the pepper is stuck inside. (You can unscrew the top and manually shake some out though.) Sure salt is more common. But it's literally a salt and pepper set that only functions as a salt shaker. Gmail for android is literally a mail sending and receiving app that can't send mail. How can this happen? I mean literally, how is the support thread I linked possible? If I were the CEO and I saw a thread like that, the issue would be fixed within 7 minutes, as every person within earshot of me rushed to make themselves look good to me. How is Google's CEO different?

kube-system 7y ago
Easy. Google’s CEO runs an advertising company. You assumption is that the app has two functions functions: sending and receiving email. It actually only has one function, put eyes in front of ads.
- howdisposs45 7y ago
  To be honest this doesn't make sense. If the salt and pepper set only had "one function" which is to display advertising in your home (the analogy works pretty well, as I could imagine the set plastered with ads) it still has to work as a salt and pepper set, or people wouldn't use it.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    In the example thread above, people are reacting by complaining about the problem. If they reacted by switching email providers, they wouldn’t be in that thread. I highly doubt Gmail’s active user count is affected by any more than a minuscule amount as a result.
    - howdisposs45 7y ago
      to me, your explanation doesn't really explain how an active development team can ignore that issue. If it were just a handful of users talking about an esoteric corner case I could maybe understand.
      - kube-system 7y ago
        Those users aren't paying customers. Besides, it does appear to be a corner case. It has ~200 upvotes. Gmail has 1.5 billion users. That's 1 in 7,500,000. If every single one of them quits using Gmail, and they tell all of their friends, and all of their friends quit using Gmail, Google will still be able to tell their paying customers that those ads reach 1.5 billion users.
        howdisposs45 7y ago
        There are other threads about it. Plus, it happened to me - so the most likely explanation from my end is that it happens in 100% of cases ;). http://www.google.com/search?q=mail+stuck+in+outbox+gmail http://www.google.com/search?q=mail+stuck+in+outbox+gmail A single quora answer alone has 20k views. Do you think that's a normal number of views on a quora answer? How many views do you think that quora answer should have for you to think it's a problem? 200k? 2m? 20m? 200m? 2b? (A single quora answer does not represent everyone who has a problem. Maybe 0.01% of people with a specific problem will end up reading a specific quora answer. So I think that 20k represents 200 million users, or more than 10% of Gmail's userbase. While we're just throwing around made up numbers. Maybe it's 100% of installed gmail for android apps with that problem. (Since not every gmail user uses android, uses the android app, and uses it to send mail.) Anyway I think up to 100% of the android app users could be affected. Still, you answered the question: perhaps the development team doesn't feel that 20,000 reports is a priority. Maybe the salt and pepper manufacturer doesn't care that every one of their pepper shakers doesn't let peppers out. 20,000 complaints just don't matter. Important people use iPhone anyway.
craftinator 7y ago
Maybe they are all focused on the visual design and adding new feature bloat. This does seem like a problem with software economics, where people will put up with non functional software as long as it looks nice and always has new features advertised to them.

kube-system 7y ago

Easy. Google’s CEO runs an advertising company. You assumption is that the app has two functions functions: sending and receiving email. It actually only has one function, put eyes in front of ads.

howdisposs45 7y ago
To be honest this doesn't make sense. If the salt and pepper set only had "one function" which is to display advertising in your home (the analogy works pretty well, as I could imagine the set plastered with ads) it still has to work as a salt and pepper set, or people wouldn't use it.
- kube-system 7y ago
  In the example thread above, people are reacting by complaining about the problem. If they reacted by switching email providers, they wouldn’t be in that thread. I highly doubt Gmail’s active user count is affected by any more than a minuscule amount as a result.
  - howdisposs45 7y ago
    to me, your explanation doesn't really explain how an active development team can ignore that issue. If it were just a handful of users talking about an esoteric corner case I could maybe understand.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      Those users aren't paying customers. Besides, it does appear to be a corner case. It has ~200 upvotes. Gmail has 1.5 billion users. That's 1 in 7,500,000. If every single one of them quits using Gmail, and they tell all of their friends, and all of their friends quit using Gmail, Google will still be able to tell their paying customers that those ads reach 1.5 billion users.
      - howdisposs45 7y ago
        There are other threads about it. Plus, it happened to me - so the most likely explanation from my end is that it happens in 100% of cases ;). http://www.google.com/search?q=mail+stuck+in+outbox+gmail http://www.google.com/search?q=mail+stuck+in+outbox+gmail A single quora answer alone has 20k views. Do you think that's a normal number of views on a quora answer? How many views do you think that quora answer should have for you to think it's a problem? 200k? 2m? 20m? 200m? 2b? (A single quora answer does not represent everyone who has a problem. Maybe 0.01% of people with a specific problem will end up reading a specific quora answer. So I think that 20k represents 200 million users, or more than 10% of Gmail's userbase. While we're just throwing around made up numbers. Maybe it's 100% of installed gmail for android apps with that problem. (Since not every gmail user uses android, uses the android app, and uses it to send mail.) Anyway I think up to 100% of the android app users could be affected. Still, you answered the question: perhaps the development team doesn't feel that 20,000 reports is a priority. Maybe the salt and pepper manufacturer doesn't care that every one of their pepper shakers doesn't let peppers out. 20,000 complaints just don't matter. Important people use iPhone anyway.

craftinator 7y ago

Maybe they are all focused on the visual design and adding new feature bloat. This does seem like a problem with software economics, where people will put up with non functional software as long as it looks nice and always has new features advertised to them.