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> Wow. It's not even just everything you buy from Google--from the post it seems like they actively compile and organize the data from every purchaser transact

> Wow. It's not even just everything you buy from Google--from the post it seems like they actively compile and organize the data from every purchaser transaction that touches your GMail account. IIRC, that's why Amazon purchase emails are utterly useless now. They realized Google was getting their precious customer data via Gmail, so they cut off the flow years ago. It's another example of how the modern economy has many consumer-hostile incentives that have actually led to regressions rather than improvements.

standardUser 5y ago
Huh, I suppose that's why I sometimes have to click through several different Amazon emails to find the specific order or shipment I'm looking for. They've removed the details from the actual email.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Huh, I suppose that's why I sometimes have to click through several different Amazon emails to find the specific order or shipment I'm looking for. They've removed the details from the actual email. Yeah, and there's nothing you can do. I don't even use gmail anymore, and the emails are still garbage. I think for awhile they used to include a truncated name of one of the products in the order, but it looks like they even removed that (sometime around August 2019, based on my emails). Unrelated observation: in my original comment I added a second paragraph noting that this regression was due to the incentives caused by modern capitalism (and it is: owners trying to extract maximum value for themselves, even if that means hurting their customers), and it immediately started getting downvoted. Then I change "capitalism" to "economy" and it started going up again. Some people are really sensitive. It must be blasphemy to criticize the invisible hand and the wisdom of the owners ti guides. I guess right is whatever they do.
  - space_fountain 5y ago
    Could also be that they just want you back on their site because some ab test at some point decided you're more likely to be buy from them again if they can get you back onto amazon.com
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Spooky23 5y ago
  It benefits them in many ways. Good luck figuring out where a random Amazon box was ordered from if there are multiple buyers in your household.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  Just go to your order history in Amazon, it's all there and much more searchable than trying to rifle through emails.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    I.e. forcing you to use their platform to access this data, instead of an independent platform that is e-mail. Nice way of taking away users' control over their own data.
    - ohgodplsno 5y ago
      Had everyone not given full access to a worldwide privacy invading operation such as google, it might not have been a problem. You reap what you sow, and HN has sown plenty of Google seeds.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        It's not a Google thing; it's an Amazon thing. Amazon is hyper-paranoid about leaking any aspect of its purchase history data; that's what it considers the "special sauce" every bit as much as Facebook guards its social graph or Google guards the ad fraud detection algorithm.
    - mullingitover 5y ago
      You're already using their platform to generate the data, I don't understand the problem with also using it to view that data. Not providing intricate details about your purchases in email is a privacy-enhancing feature, given that probably most of their customers are using gmail.
      - compiler-guy 5y ago
        Except that I can't export that data from amazon easily if I, say, change or delete my account, or just want to run a program on my own data. Whereas that is pretty easy with any sort of email client.
awill 5y ago
Thanks for this. I didn't realize why, but it's always annoyed me how little info is on Amazon's order confirmation emails, forcing you to click the link. This is why!
prepend 5y ago
That’s funny, I wondered why Amazon order emailed sucked so hard lately. Thought it was just them being dumb. I liked getting an email with the item, price, shipping, etc. Now it’s just an order number and shipping notice and I have to click on the order to figure out what items are coming. Particularly fun when I order 6 items and they get split into 6 shipments. Or just trying to keep track of my dozens of Amazon orders. I switched to Walmart as they send useful product updates.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Yea. That’s a big lightbulb moment for me. Also, that’s a great state of things today… Amazon has to make their product worse because Google won’t ever stop siphoning. I still have a Gmail, but I’m properly compelled to kill it, finally.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    It's not like killing it will make your emails from Amazon better. Now that Amazon realizes that data can be scraped by anyone, they won't leak it again.
- minsc__and__boo 5y ago
  >That’s funny, I wondered why Amazon order emailed sucked so hard lately. Thought it was just them being dumb. It's the opposite. Amazon wants you to click back into the store to buy things. One way to do that is forcing you to view orders in the store instead of your email inbox. They care more about that than Google seeing your purchase history.
paxys 5y ago
I wish they would send useful emails to non @gmail.com addresses though
- mysterydip 5y ago
  Can't you get @yourdomain.com pointed to a gmail address? Businesses hosted using the Google suite as well.
- wanderingstan 5y ago
  Perhaps because many people, like me, have a primary non gmail address that is forwarded to my gmail address. That, and businesses with custom domains that use Google apps and thus have gmail as the UI.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Google doesn't scan business Gmail accounts, so that's not a concern at least
    - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      Even if they say they don’t, how could you ever know they aren’t scanning business accounts? What in Google’s history has given you confidence in this conclusion?
    - ohgodplsno 5y ago
      [source needed] Google has been found to lie and play dirty over and over again throughout their existence. You'd be a fool to think they don't even scan it. For "safety reasons", and oops, the contents of your email have accidentally been logged and stored, what a shame.
      - paxys 5y ago
        The source is Google (https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-whitepaper/page-6.html https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-wh...). Of course you can make the "they are lying" argument for anything, but in this case there would be several billion dollar lawsuits from every large company they signed a contract with if this was actually happening.
mdale 5y ago
Well long as you click on the order link in chrome browser guess it's fair game :P
jimmaswell 5y ago
How does it hurt Amazon's business? Google might recommend an ad for a competitor with similar products?
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  google keeps trying to make “google shopping” happen. reading customer data helps them improve their store front, amazon would like to avoid helping any (future) competition
- llampx 5y ago
  Since they are competitors, anything that helps google hurts Amazon
memling 5y ago
> It's another example of how the modern economy has many consumer-hostile incentives that have actually led to regressions rather than improvements. To be honest, I actually think it's probably more privacy-conscious to eliminate as much information as possible (but no more) from these kinds of emails. While I suppose Amazon is concerned with competitive behaviors from Google, I'm more concerned that Google or any other actor with access to my email could look through my purchasing list, or my library reading list, or... Email is an insecure and non-private medium, but we often use it for items that require some level of security or privacy. I'd prefer if more companies held that information closely.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  if someone has access to my gmail they can just reset my amazon password and view my order history there
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > To be honest, I actually think it's probably more privacy-conscious to eliminate as much information as possible (but no more) from these kinds of emails. But that makes them useless for what they are, especially the shipping ones: "You made three orders recently, one shipped. If you actually want to know which one (and you haven't memorized your order IDs) click here!" This is actually a pretty annoying regression for me, because I buy things from many sites and have no way to search my overall order history anymore. > Email is an insecure and non-private medium, but we often use it for items that require some level of security or privacy. I'd prefer if more companies held that information closely. It is, but there's no better system and ruining email doesn't solve that privacy problem (e.g. Amazon may sell this information). At a minimum, it should be a setting so people can opt to get useful emails if they want to make that tradeoff.
  - pythonaut_16 5y ago
    Yep. The decision for Google to have access to the contents of my email is mine, not Amazon's (or whoever else). It's the decision I make when I use a Gmail account, and it's up to me to decide that based on Google' privacy policies and reputation. If I don't want Google to have any access then I'll use a different provider or self host my email. If I want to publish all of my emails publicly that's also my decision.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> that's why Amazon purchase emails are utterly useless now Would be nice if Amazon only made their e-mails to Google addresses (Gmail or otherwise) useless.
llimos 5y ago
Part of me wishes they would say what the reason is in the email. That might make Google think twice about this kind of thing.
bserge 5y ago
Not like they're doing anything useful with it. "You bought a toilet? Would you like another 4 toilets?" I mean, ffs, maybe recommend a bidet or installation tools.
JohnFen 5y ago
I completely understand why Amazon has done this. I do something similar, but more targeted -- I avoid sending emails to gmail addresses at all when possible, and when it's unavoidable, I try to make the emails as minimalistic as I can get away with. I see Amazon as doing something similar, but less targeted at gmail specifically.
pradn 5y ago
I thought it was just because email wasn't secure? That's why health and banking providers send you links to their messages; perhaps this is just for health and banking info.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lostmsu 5y ago
I am curious. If customer privacy is such a problem for Amazon and other companies, why don't they have a field in the account, where you could post a public key of some kind (e.g. PGP or S/MIME), so that all email they send you would be encrypted?

standardUser 5y ago

Huh, I suppose that's why I sometimes have to click through several different Amazon emails to find the specific order or shipment I'm looking for. They've removed the details from the actual email.

tablespoon 5y ago
> Huh, I suppose that's why I sometimes have to click through several different Amazon emails to find the specific order or shipment I'm looking for. They've removed the details from the actual email. Yeah, and there's nothing you can do. I don't even use gmail anymore, and the emails are still garbage. I think for awhile they used to include a truncated name of one of the products in the order, but it looks like they even removed that (sometime around August 2019, based on my emails). Unrelated observation: in my original comment I added a second paragraph noting that this regression was due to the incentives caused by modern capitalism (and it is: owners trying to extract maximum value for themselves, even if that means hurting their customers), and it immediately started getting downvoted. Then I change "capitalism" to "economy" and it started going up again. Some people are really sensitive. It must be blasphemy to criticize the invisible hand and the wisdom of the owners ti guides. I guess right is whatever they do.
- space_fountain 5y ago
  Could also be that they just want you back on their site because some ab test at some point decided you're more likely to be buy from them again if they can get you back onto amazon.com
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Spooky23 5y ago
It benefits them in many ways. Good luck figuring out where a random Amazon box was ordered from if there are multiple buyers in your household.
mullingitover 5y ago
Just go to your order history in Amazon, it's all there and much more searchable than trying to rifle through emails.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I.e. forcing you to use their platform to access this data, instead of an independent platform that is e-mail. Nice way of taking away users' control over their own data.
  - ohgodplsno 5y ago
    Had everyone not given full access to a worldwide privacy invading operation such as google, it might not have been a problem. You reap what you sow, and HN has sown plenty of Google seeds.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      It's not a Google thing; it's an Amazon thing. Amazon is hyper-paranoid about leaking any aspect of its purchase history data; that's what it considers the "special sauce" every bit as much as Facebook guards its social graph or Google guards the ad fraud detection algorithm.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    You're already using their platform to generate the data, I don't understand the problem with also using it to view that data. Not providing intricate details about your purchases in email is a privacy-enhancing feature, given that probably most of their customers are using gmail.
    - compiler-guy 5y ago
      Except that I can't export that data from amazon easily if I, say, change or delete my account, or just want to run a program on my own data. Whereas that is pretty easy with any sort of email client.

awill 5y ago

Thanks for this. I didn't realize why, but it's always annoyed me how little info is on Amazon's order confirmation emails, forcing you to click the link. This is why!

prepend 5y ago

That’s funny, I wondered why Amazon order emailed sucked so hard lately. Thought it was just them being dumb. I liked getting an email with the item, price, shipping, etc. Now it’s just an order number and shipping notice and I have to click on the order to figure out what items are coming. Particularly fun when I order 6 items and they get split into 6 shipments. Or just trying to keep track of my dozens of Amazon orders. I switched to Walmart as they send useful product updates.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Yea. That’s a big lightbulb moment for me. Also, that’s a great state of things today… Amazon has to make their product worse because Google won’t ever stop siphoning. I still have a Gmail, but I’m properly compelled to kill it, finally.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It's not like killing it will make your emails from Amazon better. Now that Amazon realizes that data can be scraped by anyone, they won't leak it again.
minsc__and__boo 5y ago
>That’s funny, I wondered why Amazon order emailed sucked so hard lately. Thought it was just them being dumb. It's the opposite. Amazon wants you to click back into the store to buy things. One way to do that is forcing you to view orders in the store instead of your email inbox. They care more about that than Google seeing your purchase history.

paxys 5y ago

I wish they would send useful emails to non @gmail.com addresses though

mysterydip 5y ago
Can't you get @yourdomain.com pointed to a gmail address? Businesses hosted using the Google suite as well.
wanderingstan 5y ago
Perhaps because many people, like me, have a primary non gmail address that is forwarded to my gmail address. That, and businesses with custom domains that use Google apps and thus have gmail as the UI.
- paxys 5y ago
  Google doesn't scan business Gmail accounts, so that's not a concern at least
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Even if they say they don’t, how could you ever know they aren’t scanning business accounts? What in Google’s history has given you confidence in this conclusion?
  - ohgodplsno 5y ago
    [source needed] Google has been found to lie and play dirty over and over again throughout their existence. You'd be a fool to think they don't even scan it. For "safety reasons", and oops, the contents of your email have accidentally been logged and stored, what a shame.
    - paxys 5y ago
      The source is Google (https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-whitepaper/page-6.html https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-wh...). Of course you can make the "they are lying" argument for anything, but in this case there would be several billion dollar lawsuits from every large company they signed a contract with if this was actually happening.

mdale 5y ago

Well long as you click on the order link in chrome browser guess it's fair game :P

jimmaswell 5y ago

How does it hurt Amazon's business? Google might recommend an ad for a competitor with similar products?

jazzyjackson 5y ago
google keeps trying to make “google shopping” happen. reading customer data helps them improve their store front, amazon would like to avoid helping any (future) competition
llampx 5y ago
Since they are competitors, anything that helps google hurts Amazon

memling 5y ago

> It's another example of how the modern economy has many consumer-hostile incentives that have actually led to regressions rather than improvements. To be honest, I actually think it's probably more privacy-conscious to eliminate as much information as possible (but no more) from these kinds of emails. While I suppose Amazon is concerned with competitive behaviors from Google, I'm more concerned that Google or any other actor with access to my email could look through my purchasing list, or my library reading list, or... Email is an insecure and non-private medium, but we often use it for items that require some level of security or privacy. I'd prefer if more companies held that information closely.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
if someone has access to my gmail they can just reset my amazon password and view my order history there
tablespoon 5y ago
> To be honest, I actually think it's probably more privacy-conscious to eliminate as much information as possible (but no more) from these kinds of emails. But that makes them useless for what they are, especially the shipping ones: "You made three orders recently, one shipped. If you actually want to know which one (and you haven't memorized your order IDs) click here!" This is actually a pretty annoying regression for me, because I buy things from many sites and have no way to search my overall order history anymore. > Email is an insecure and non-private medium, but we often use it for items that require some level of security or privacy. I'd prefer if more companies held that information closely. It is, but there's no better system and ruining email doesn't solve that privacy problem (e.g. Amazon may sell this information). At a minimum, it should be a setting so people can opt to get useful emails if they want to make that tradeoff.
- pythonaut_16 5y ago
  Yep. The decision for Google to have access to the contents of my email is mine, not Amazon's (or whoever else). It's the decision I make when I use a Gmail account, and it's up to me to decide that based on Google' privacy policies and reputation. If I don't want Google to have any access then I'll use a different provider or self host my email. If I want to publish all of my emails publicly that's also my decision.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> that's why Amazon purchase emails are utterly useless now Would be nice if Amazon only made their e-mails to Google addresses (Gmail or otherwise) useless.

llimos 5y ago

Part of me wishes they would say what the reason is in the email. That might make Google think twice about this kind of thing.

bserge 5y ago

Not like they're doing anything useful with it. "You bought a toilet? Would you like another 4 toilets?" I mean, ffs, maybe recommend a bidet or installation tools.

JohnFen 5y ago

I completely understand why Amazon has done this. I do something similar, but more targeted -- I avoid sending emails to gmail addresses at all when possible, and when it's unavoidable, I try to make the emails as minimalistic as I can get away with. I see Amazon as doing something similar, but less targeted at gmail specifically.

pradn 5y ago

I thought it was just because email wasn't secure? That's why health and banking providers send you links to their messages; perhaps this is just for health and banking info.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lostmsu 5y ago

I am curious. If customer privacy is such a problem for Amazon and other companies, why don't they have a field in the account, where you could post a public key of some kind (e.g. PGP or S/MIME), so that all email they send you would be encrypted?