21 ms·

Gmail: Introducing Actions in the Inbox

260 points by duckyflip 13y ago

dododo 13y ago
new tool for phishing. perfect.
- patrickaljord 13y ago
  I guess that's the negativity Larry Page was talking about yesterday, sad indeed.
  - bvdbijl 13y ago
    Yeah. There are so many positive possibilities yet a large group of people still choose to focus on the negative side. I hope this can change one day
    - 3825 13y ago
      Just like short sellers, we need these naysayers to keep us grounded. :) Yes, I choose to see the positive possibilities and the opportunities that show up thanks to our beloved naysayers.
    - crdoconnor 13y ago
      So many possibilities? There is nothing here that couldn't be achieved by having the user click on a link. And he's right, it does make phishing easier.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        > So many possibilities? There is nothing here that couldn't be achieved by having the user click on a link. Because its machine parseable, it makes a lot of presentation options available that aren't available when you rely on a standard hyperlink without a data format with a standardized identification of the requested action. > And he's right, it does make phishing easier. Well, that depends on what the requirements are to have the client present the actions from the schemas: the current Google requirements, I would say, do not make phishing easier. You must register with Google for the schemas in the email you send to be recognized in Google products (e.g., Gmail) [1], and the registration is per-set-of-emails, and fairly specific as to the content, and appears to be manually reviewed [2]. [1] https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with... [2] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PA-vjjk3yJF7MLPOVKbIz3MBfhyma2obS8NIZ0JYx8I/viewform?pli=1 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PA-vjjk3yJF7MLPOVKbIz3MBfhy...
        imissmyjuno 13y ago
        >Because its machine parseable, it makes a lot of presentation options available that aren't available when you rely on a standard hyperlink without a data format with a standardized identification of the requested action. You're right: this addition turns email into a data or event queue of sorts with standardized actions that can be performed on it. I like it. Given that email is one of the few non vendor-locked communication technologies we have and we already have a lot of infrastructure to deliver it reliably, this seems a promising evolution path. I'd like to see something similar for IM: currently SMS is the only open standard for instant messaging, and any other option locks you into either a platform or a specific client, which the other person will probably not use.
        dragonwriter 13y ago
        > currently SMS is the only open standard for instant messaging XMPP is an open standard (through IETF RFCs and related standards) for messaging and presence whose motivating use case was instant messaging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP
        imissmyjuno 13y ago
        Right. My comment is more on the adoption rather than availability of open standards.
        pjscott 13y ago
        XMPP is also used, behind the scenes, with Google Chat and Facebook Chat. It has a fair amount of adoption; you just don't really hear about it much.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
      - _pmf_ 13y ago
        > This thread is hilarious. Keep your heads in the sand. Does everyone need to get excited for features that existed in Outlook ca. 2000 A.D. just because they are wrapped in a shiny Web 2.0 veneer?
        icebraining 13y ago
        It did? Using an open format? I've never heard of that. Do you know the name of the feature?
        sigzero 13y ago
        You keep harping on the "open format". So what? That doesn't change any of the talking points here.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        icebraining 13y ago
        Being an open format that can be implemented by any other mail client is, in my opinion, an important part of the feature, especially for those of us who don't use Gmail.
        _pmf_ 13y ago
        > It did? Using an open format? As much as Web 2.0 enthusiasts loathe the fact, Microsoft actually invented XMLHTTPRequest. See http://stackoverflow.com/a/12067786/112125 http://stackoverflow.com/a/12067786/112125
        dubcanada 13y ago
        What does that have to do with anything? Netscape invented Javascript. Oh look another random point that seems to provide nothing to the conversation. I think it's pretty well aware Microsoft (or should I say a select few working on IE at Microsoft) invented "AJAX"
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      No. It's more that there are so many positive possibilities yet a large group of people still choose to exploit them to make themselves money by harming others and end up breaking things for everyone else. The whole history of modern operating systems and the Web is the example of that. Think of all the amazing and useful things that could be (and have been) done had there was no Data Execution Prevention or Same-Origin Policy or any other limit introduced because of security.
  - tonyedgecombe 13y ago
    I don't think so, it seems an obvious concern to me.
  - sigmavirus24 13y ago
    Because security really is never a good reason to be skeptical and skepticism, no matter how valid, is just a cloak for hating on Google. I love GMail and lots of Google's products. I even like that this feature will be limited to companies that register with Google. It doesn't change the fact that those partners could be broken into and used to send out malicious emails. Also, please don't try to insinuate that I'm against the feature. I'm not. I can stop using GMail if I ever want to. I just think everyone should consider their own security and decide how valuable it is to them based on reasonable possibilities.
- rdl 13y ago
  Hopefully Google will get S/MIME built in.
- treahauet 13y ago
  How many spam/phising emails do you actually get in your Gmail? And of those, how many are DKIM/SPF signed?
  - Colliwinks 13y ago
    The people targeted by phishing attacks have no idea what those terms mean.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      It doesn't matter. Gmail does, and they block the feature for any sender which doesn't sign their emails. https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/securing-actions https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/securing...
      - eps 13y ago
        I routinely send emails through a mail server that doesn't sign them and they are delivered to Gmail recipients just fine.
        icebraining 13y ago
        Sorry, I edited the post. They block that feature, not the whole mail.
- crucialfelix 13y ago
  a company that inserts this type of response hook in their emails needs to register with google. the response interface looks clearly separated—its not in the body of the email—so there is no way that a phisher could fake it. so it actually could help to SOLVE the phishing issue. especially if other mail providers sign on.
yread 13y ago
I don't get it, wouldn't an html email with a form element do the same thing?
- pfg 13y ago
  Some html elements (like forms, form elements, ...) won't work in emails/get stripped by (web-)mail clients. The same goes for JavaScript and a lot of CSS features. Probably would be a security nightmare.
  - diffsir 13y ago
    Yeah.. it's not like forms work in Gmail. oh wait they do. Get your facts straight.
- codeka 13y ago
  The buttons appear in the subject line in your inbox, so you can click them without opening the mail first. I think the use cases are fairly limited, but I can think of a few interesting ones (for example, bugzilla notifications could link directly to the bugzilla page, mailing lists could have a "manage subscription" button, etc)
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > I don't get it, wouldn't an html email with a form element do the same thing? No, it wouldn't identify the meaning of the requested action to the email client in a way which allows the mail client to categorize/present the email specially based on the requested action, and in a manner which is consistent with other emails with the same kind of action request.
  - roc 13y ago
    So... you're saying it should have been conceived of as a particular file type and attached, like all other non-message-related elements? Would Google encode a vcf file in JSON and embed it in the message? How is handling VCF different than handling other optionally-actionable data?
nwh 13y ago
I'm expecting "this email designed for gmail" badges soon.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Both Microdata and JSON-LD are open formats.
  - pfortuny 13y ago
    As is HTML and it provides little benefits to a lot of ordinary people and a lot to a lot of rogues. The fact that it is open does not imply it needs either to be supported (does gmail support S/MIME, by the way?) or that it is convenient.
    - calinet6 13y ago
      ... HTML? You're joking, right?
      - pfortuny 13y ago
        Not that I know of. Why? Links? Phishing would be much different if people read links instead of the <a> label. Images? Really? Just attach them and do not add clutter to the message. Edit: did I say something wrong? Really?
        kbenson 13y ago
        There is a large disconnect between people that use/default HTML on in their mail clients, and people that don't. Additionally, as always, people take it as an attack against themselves when you threaten an action they do often and like doing. For my (probably our?) part, I prefer text email to a large degree. I do enjoy the ability to view in HTML a few select correspondences I get, but they could just as easily be links to a webpage. In a similar vein, I prefer bottom posting or inline replies for anything beyond a simple response, and trimming unused portions from large quoted sections. People that reply with color coded text to denote who's speaking cause me a unique type of pain, and I reserve a unique type of hatred for them. That said, there are probably others that I annoy with my style of correspondence.
cafeconleche 13y ago
I tried to email the following two examples with a simple SMTP python script: https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/end-to-end-example https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/end-to-e... (The html with my own link) https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/embedding-schemas-in-emails https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/embedding-schema... From my account to the same account but it did not render any actions in my gmail inbox. Did any of you guys succeed in making the buttons appear?
- mqzaidi 13y ago
  Same here, didn't work. Tried it on an app domain and @gmail.com address as well.
- darxius 13y ago
  Is it possible Google is rolling out the feature incrementally? You might not fully have the feature yet.
- pornel 13y ago
  Maybe you need to register first? https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with...
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    The post you responded to addressed sending an email from one Gmail account to the same Gmail account. If you read the first paragraph [1] of the page you link, you will note that this does not require registration, so that does not appear to be the issue. [1] We are excited to see how you plan to use schemas in email. You can start testing your own integration today. All schemas you send to yourself (from x@gmail.com to x@gmail.com) will be displayed in Google products. So go ahead and try it out now!
- MindTwister 13y ago
  This is possibly due to the security requirements: https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/securing-actions https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/securing...
dirkdk 13y ago
awesome! so how many other clients will support this? Gmail is pretty big, but if functionality is limited to Gmail it won't take off
- richbradshaw 13y ago
  It's cool for companies using Google Apps.
  - dirkdk 13y ago
    yep, thought that too. As Exchange has an easy way to send calendar invites
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
planetjones 13y ago
Hmm. Making a universal email message have bespoke instructions for a specific mail provider. Call me old fashioned but I don't like that. Infact I still like to read my e-mails in plain text. Also, I dare say, not so useful for the many of us accessing gmail via Mac devices' mail clients.
- andybak 13y ago
  1. It's a progressive enhancement so nothing stops working 2. It should be possible for any mail provider who chooses to implement these features, no?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Making a universal email message have bespoke instructions for a specific mail provider. Call me old fashioned but I don't like that. Its all using open standard formats, and the specific schemas are open standards or proposed for standardization (and Google has said that its schema support may change if the schemas change in the standardization process.) Other providers could use it as well. This is how progress happens in open systems. The alternative is either abandoning the open system for new functionality, or just never getting new functionality at all. And its not the provider that is key here, but the client (the fact that for many gmail users the supplier of both the mail service and the mail client is the same makes it easy to confuse the issue.) > Also, I dare say, not so useful for the many of us accessing gmail via Mac devices' mail clients. Yes, features in the Gmail client that aren't included in other clients aren't useful to people using the other clients. I'm not sure why this is noteworthy.
  - Smudge 13y ago
    They may be open formats, but you can't just throw Microdata and JSON-LD into an email and expect Gmail to display your actions. You have to register with Google: https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with...
- k3n 13y ago
  Implementation-specific email headers aren't new, and many providers have been leveraging them in one way or another -- probably since email itself came to be. Outlook is a great example here. It's basically just value-add's for the client. You can still read email in any client, so why would you choose any specific client? I think the onus remains on the content creators, just as it is on the web and elsewhere on the net, that they only use the extended functionality to enhance the content (and not replace it). An example here would be HTML emails -- which, since you said you prefer plain text, I'm sure you hate? But they are common and those that use them know that they need to include a "view on the web" link for clients who don't understand HTML. I do like plain text the best though, as I think that's where email excels, though SMS has some overlap. Ultrafunk Popcorn[1] was my preferred email client for 5+ years, and was an awesome client. Required only a conf file and something silly like 200k of RAM to run. Sadly, development stopped on it awhile back I think, though it probably still works just fine. It's the equivalent of the foobar2000 music player, dead simple and efficient. 1. http://web.archive.org/web/20130116201517/http://ultrafunk.com/popcorn http://web.archive.org/web/20130116201517/http://ultrafunk.c...
swah 13y ago
Is there any way to compose them in Gmail?
d43594 13y ago
Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy? 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well'. Last thing I want in my inbox. Call me a purist but email is for emailing people.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- kyrias 13y ago
  Few things adhere to the Unix philosophies anymore, and really, why should they?
  - d43594 13y ago
    The question you should really be asking is why shouldn't they? The best applications out there do one thing and do it well. Awk, sed, vi(m), emacs, git. Need I go on?
    - infrec 13y ago
      This is simply nonsensical. Even the applications you listed don't just "do one thing". Vim and emacs have a trillion features each. Git has way more features than some other versioning systems. When does "one thing" turn into multiple things? Within the context of the thread - when did gmail stop doing one thing? When they added filters? When they added all of the labs features? With this current announcement? Do one thing and do it well is great but defining the scope of the one thing is not something to be taken trivially.
    - tree_of_item 13y ago
      What is the one thing Emacs does well? Emacs is the polar opposite of the Unix philosophy; it's more in line with the Lisp Machine tradition. Programs like sort, uniq, and grep don't embed interpreters for dynamic languages and provide thousands of different extensions for anything from reading mail to connecting to IRC.
- abraininavat 13y ago
dmbaggett 13y ago
Lots of strangely negative reactions here. We (http://inky.com http://inky.com) think this is a positive development and plan to support it as well. We're happy Google has promoted open standards in doing this.
- diffsir 13y ago
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- planetjones 13y ago
  I don't think the reactions are strange at all. Google have a bad track record in implementing things and then abandoning them for one. I want my email to be a consistent experience - not to get some different behavior if I access through a certain device. Email and its simplicity was universal - I saw the same text on my phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. Will every mail sender who makes use of this, include the JSON and an alternative link to achieve the same result. I think this could get very inconsistent very quickly. Fragmenting email is not something I like the idea of. For Google Apps customers' internal mails I think this is useful. For the wider Internet I don't like it.
  - dmbaggett 13y ago
    I see your point, but consistency of email display went out the window with HTML email. We (and Google, and hopefully everybody else providing mail readers) put a ton of work into sanitizing HTML before rendering it in the preview pane. This makes mail display a delicate balance between safety and preserving the sender's intent. It's already a far from trivial problem, and is one of the hundred or so non-obvious reasons why making a mail client isn't easy. What's nice about what they've done here is that they've required an additional (but now standard) level of authentication for the senders who want to include this richer, more actionable content. And they haven't hardwired this into Google Plus or some other walled garden. That's welcome, IMO.
    - 13y ago
barapa 13y ago
Can the response include who is clicking the action? For example, if you want to take a quick poll from within an email that is sent to multiple people, can you identify who is voting for what?
- navan 13y ago
  This is usually done by generating different URLs for different emails. The URLs need to carry access token parameters. See https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/limited-use-access-tokens https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/limited-....
qznc 13y ago
Why don't they support a mechanism which works with plain text emails? E.g. put the JSON stuff into a header field. Btw how would one suggest something like this officially? There seems to be no issue tracker or anything for gmail.
- dmbaggett 13y ago
  Statistically speaking, nobody sends plain text email any more.
  - qznc 13y ago
    Even if you take the spam out of the statistics?
untog 13y ago
The fact that this was posted on the Google Apps blog is telling- I imagine that Google wants to roll this out to Apps users before general Gmail users. I'm surprised by the reaction in here- yes, it's an addition to the standard e-mail system. Do we really want that system to stand absolutely still? If that's the case, why are we cheering so much web browser development? Surely a browser from 1997 should be good enough for anyone?
- MrDOS 13y ago
  > I imagine that Google wants to roll this out to Apps users before general Gmail users. That'll be a first. Historically, Google has deeply neglected Apps users. My Apps account didn't get G+ until almost a year after it became generally available.
  - maratd 13y ago
    > Google has deeply neglected Apps users. That's a funny way of looking at it. I pay Google money for my account so that I have, above all, a reliable system to use for my business. No beta bullshit. And with Google Apps, that's what I get. Regular users are the guinea pigs and once a feature has proven itself year(s) later, it's added to Apps. As someone who runs a business, I'm quite happy with that approach. I get all the latest and greatest on my personal GMail account, I don't need it on my business account.
    - ditojim 13y ago
      Yup - Google hardens consumer for the enterprise.
    - johnmw 13y ago
      Good point. I think in the days before Google starting charging for Apps, many of the users were the tech-head-early-adopter crowd. Which is why many were so disappointed that they got all the new innovations last. I think everyone would be happier if Apps users could signal to Google they would like to be a 'new features beta tester'.
  - 13y ago
robspychala 13y ago
super cool. we are doing something similar with Birdseye Mail's Smart Actions http://www.birdseyemail.com/developers http://www.birdseyemail.com/developers ... we opted to reuse open graph tags in favor of creating a new JSON / JavaScript syntax Still really great that Google signed up partners for the rollout. It's a bit of a chicken vs. the egg problem for technologies like this and it seems they have some cool email providers on board to help with the adoption. Regardless of the outcome, this is great for consumption of emails and for users who have trouble dealing with their high volume of email.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
yarrel 13y ago
To be removed in 3..2..
udfalkso 13y ago
How about an "action" to let me archive/delete a message with just one click without opening it?
- sisk 13y ago
  You can accomplish both of those with keyboard shortcuts. "e" archives it, "#" trashes it. They also work in the list view if you select the messages you're concerned with ("x" to select).
bigtones 13y ago
We were one of the companies to support this during the launch announcement today, and we've been playing with it for the past month or so. It's an awesome feature for transactional emails that require a quick action to be performed - we use it for task notification emails where you can check off a task as complete right within the email client. It's based on an open standard, and plain old HTTP POST so not specifically tied to Gmail.
- reddit_clone 13y ago
  Again, what is the difference between this and clicking a link? Instead of showing a link , they show a button is it? Adding a bunch of crap into email body is worth that? This is right out of Microsoft's embrace/extend playbook.
  - pjscott 13y ago
    Here's a use case: 1. I book a flight, and get a flight confirmation email from the airline. It includes a machine-readable version of my flight info in the metadata. 2. I press a button, and the flight gets added to Google Calendar, or a flight-status tracking app, or a shared travel calendar service for people who fly a lot. Note that this stuff doesn't need to be written by Google; it's an open format. Sound potentially useful?
logvol 13y ago
Sounds like Google's response to Facebook messenger & open graph. Definitely agree with most of the commenter's. Sounds like a huge helper for google apps and the SaaS apps built on there.
notatoad 13y ago
can we expect this data to start feeding into Google Now?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  You can expect it to feed Google Now [1] and Google Search [2]. That's a rather major part of the point. [1] https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-now https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-now [2] https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-search https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-search
orangethirty 13y ago
How long till gmail us turned into a hybrid private messaging/gmail system tightly integrated with G+ (more so than now)? Gmail as we know it seems to be on its last legs. Too bad, because it is a good product.
- pjscott 13y ago
  That's a remarkably dramatic response to Google announcing that (a) you can add structured event metadata to emails in a straightforward open format, and (b) G+ will use this metadata.
QuantumGuy 13y ago
Just need to make sure I am getting this. Actions will make things happen once you open the email right? I am rather confused by this whole concept. Furthermore when will Google give me more control over my inbox like a builtin ifttt system? I mean filters does alot but I want more and not just for gmail but for all Google services. Example certain days I go to the gym but I only go if it is not raining. I wish I could tell calendar schedule gym if not raining. Is that what actions is?
emilymainzer 13y ago
It was very nice interface !

260 points by duckyflip 13y ago

dododo 13y ago

new tool for phishing. perfect.

patrickaljord 13y ago
I guess that's the negativity Larry Page was talking about yesterday, sad indeed.
- bvdbijl 13y ago
  Yeah. There are so many positive possibilities yet a large group of people still choose to focus on the negative side. I hope this can change one day
  - 3825 13y ago
    Just like short sellers, we need these naysayers to keep us grounded. :) Yes, I choose to see the positive possibilities and the opportunities that show up thanks to our beloved naysayers.
  - crdoconnor 13y ago
    So many possibilities? There is nothing here that couldn't be achieved by having the user click on a link. And he's right, it does make phishing easier.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > So many possibilities? There is nothing here that couldn't be achieved by having the user click on a link. Because its machine parseable, it makes a lot of presentation options available that aren't available when you rely on a standard hyperlink without a data format with a standardized identification of the requested action. > And he's right, it does make phishing easier. Well, that depends on what the requirements are to have the client present the actions from the schemas: the current Google requirements, I would say, do not make phishing easier. You must register with Google for the schemas in the email you send to be recognized in Google products (e.g., Gmail) [1], and the registration is per-set-of-emails, and fairly specific as to the content, and appears to be manually reviewed [2]. [1] https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with... [2] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PA-vjjk3yJF7MLPOVKbIz3MBfhyma2obS8NIZ0JYx8I/viewform?pli=1 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PA-vjjk3yJF7MLPOVKbIz3MBfhy...
      - imissmyjuno 13y ago
        >Because its machine parseable, it makes a lot of presentation options available that aren't available when you rely on a standard hyperlink without a data format with a standardized identification of the requested action. You're right: this addition turns email into a data or event queue of sorts with standardized actions that can be performed on it. I like it. Given that email is one of the few non vendor-locked communication technologies we have and we already have a lot of infrastructure to deliver it reliably, this seems a promising evolution path. I'd like to see something similar for IM: currently SMS is the only open standard for instant messaging, and any other option locks you into either a platform or a specific client, which the other person will probably not use.
        dragonwriter 13y ago
        > currently SMS is the only open standard for instant messaging XMPP is an open standard (through IETF RFCs and related standards) for messaging and presence whose motivating use case was instant messaging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP
        imissmyjuno 13y ago
        Right. My comment is more on the adoption rather than availability of open standards.
        pjscott 13y ago
        XMPP is also used, behind the scenes, with Google Chat and Facebook Chat. It has a fair amount of adoption; you just don't really hear about it much.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - _pmf_ 13y ago
      > This thread is hilarious. Keep your heads in the sand. Does everyone need to get excited for features that existed in Outlook ca. 2000 A.D. just because they are wrapped in a shiny Web 2.0 veneer?
      - icebraining 13y ago
        It did? Using an open format? I've never heard of that. Do you know the name of the feature?
        sigzero 13y ago
        You keep harping on the "open format". So what? That doesn't change any of the talking points here.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        icebraining 13y ago
        Being an open format that can be implemented by any other mail client is, in my opinion, an important part of the feature, especially for those of us who don't use Gmail.
        _pmf_ 13y ago
        > It did? Using an open format? As much as Web 2.0 enthusiasts loathe the fact, Microsoft actually invented XMLHTTPRequest. See http://stackoverflow.com/a/12067786/112125 http://stackoverflow.com/a/12067786/112125
        dubcanada 13y ago
        What does that have to do with anything? Netscape invented Javascript. Oh look another random point that seems to provide nothing to the conversation. I think it's pretty well aware Microsoft (or should I say a select few working on IE at Microsoft) invented "AJAX"
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    No. It's more that there are so many positive possibilities yet a large group of people still choose to exploit them to make themselves money by harming others and end up breaking things for everyone else. The whole history of modern operating systems and the Web is the example of that. Think of all the amazing and useful things that could be (and have been) done had there was no Data Execution Prevention or Same-Origin Policy or any other limit introduced because of security.
- tonyedgecombe 13y ago
  I don't think so, it seems an obvious concern to me.
- sigmavirus24 13y ago
  Because security really is never a good reason to be skeptical and skepticism, no matter how valid, is just a cloak for hating on Google. I love GMail and lots of Google's products. I even like that this feature will be limited to companies that register with Google. It doesn't change the fact that those partners could be broken into and used to send out malicious emails. Also, please don't try to insinuate that I'm against the feature. I'm not. I can stop using GMail if I ever want to. I just think everyone should consider their own security and decide how valuable it is to them based on reasonable possibilities.
rdl 13y ago
Hopefully Google will get S/MIME built in.
treahauet 13y ago
How many spam/phising emails do you actually get in your Gmail? And of those, how many are DKIM/SPF signed?
- Colliwinks 13y ago
  The people targeted by phishing attacks have no idea what those terms mean.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    It doesn't matter. Gmail does, and they block the feature for any sender which doesn't sign their emails. https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/securing-actions https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/securing...
    - eps 13y ago
      I routinely send emails through a mail server that doesn't sign them and they are delivered to Gmail recipients just fine.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        Sorry, I edited the post. They block that feature, not the whole mail.
crucialfelix 13y ago
a company that inserts this type of response hook in their emails needs to register with google. the response interface looks clearly separated—its not in the body of the email—so there is no way that a phisher could fake it. so it actually could help to SOLVE the phishing issue. especially if other mail providers sign on.

yread 13y ago

I don't get it, wouldn't an html email with a form element do the same thing?

pfg 13y ago
Some html elements (like forms, form elements, ...) won't work in emails/get stripped by (web-)mail clients. The same goes for JavaScript and a lot of CSS features. Probably would be a security nightmare.
- diffsir 13y ago
  Yeah.. it's not like forms work in Gmail. oh wait they do. Get your facts straight.
codeka 13y ago
The buttons appear in the subject line in your inbox, so you can click them without opening the mail first. I think the use cases are fairly limited, but I can think of a few interesting ones (for example, bugzilla notifications could link directly to the bugzilla page, mailing lists could have a "manage subscription" button, etc)
dragonwriter 13y ago
> I don't get it, wouldn't an html email with a form element do the same thing? No, it wouldn't identify the meaning of the requested action to the email client in a way which allows the mail client to categorize/present the email specially based on the requested action, and in a manner which is consistent with other emails with the same kind of action request.
- roc 13y ago
  So... you're saying it should have been conceived of as a particular file type and attached, like all other non-message-related elements? Would Google encode a vcf file in JSON and embed it in the message? How is handling VCF different than handling other optionally-actionable data?

nwh 13y ago

I'm expecting "this email designed for gmail" badges soon.

icebraining 13y ago
Both Microdata and JSON-LD are open formats.
- pfortuny 13y ago
  As is HTML and it provides little benefits to a lot of ordinary people and a lot to a lot of rogues. The fact that it is open does not imply it needs either to be supported (does gmail support S/MIME, by the way?) or that it is convenient.
  - calinet6 13y ago
    ... HTML? You're joking, right?
    - pfortuny 13y ago
      Not that I know of. Why? Links? Phishing would be much different if people read links instead of the <a> label. Images? Really? Just attach them and do not add clutter to the message. Edit: did I say something wrong? Really?
      - kbenson 13y ago
        There is a large disconnect between people that use/default HTML on in their mail clients, and people that don't. Additionally, as always, people take it as an attack against themselves when you threaten an action they do often and like doing. For my (probably our?) part, I prefer text email to a large degree. I do enjoy the ability to view in HTML a few select correspondences I get, but they could just as easily be links to a webpage. In a similar vein, I prefer bottom posting or inline replies for anything beyond a simple response, and trimming unused portions from large quoted sections. People that reply with color coded text to denote who's speaking cause me a unique type of pain, and I reserve a unique type of hatred for them. That said, there are probably others that I annoy with my style of correspondence.

cafeconleche 13y ago

I tried to email the following two examples with a simple SMTP python script: https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/end-to-end-example https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/end-to-e... (The html with my own link) https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/embedding-schemas-in-emails https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/embedding-schema... From my account to the same account but it did not render any actions in my gmail inbox. Did any of you guys succeed in making the buttons appear?

mqzaidi 13y ago
Same here, didn't work. Tried it on an app domain and @gmail.com address as well.
darxius 13y ago
Is it possible Google is rolling out the feature incrementally? You might not fully have the feature yet.
pornel 13y ago
Maybe you need to register first? https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with...
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  The post you responded to addressed sending an email from one Gmail account to the same Gmail account. If you read the first paragraph [1] of the page you link, you will note that this does not require registration, so that does not appear to be the issue. [1] We are excited to see how you plan to use schemas in email. You can start testing your own integration today. All schemas you send to yourself (from x@gmail.com to x@gmail.com) will be displayed in Google products. So go ahead and try it out now!
MindTwister 13y ago
This is possibly due to the security requirements: https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/securing-actions https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/securing...

dirkdk 13y ago

awesome! so how many other clients will support this? Gmail is pretty big, but if functionality is limited to Gmail it won't take off

richbradshaw 13y ago
It's cool for companies using Google Apps.
- dirkdk 13y ago
  yep, thought that too. As Exchange has an easy way to send calendar invites

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

planetjones 13y ago

Hmm. Making a universal email message have bespoke instructions for a specific mail provider. Call me old fashioned but I don't like that. Infact I still like to read my e-mails in plain text. Also, I dare say, not so useful for the many of us accessing gmail via Mac devices' mail clients.

andybak 13y ago
1. It's a progressive enhancement so nothing stops working 2. It should be possible for any mail provider who chooses to implement these features, no?
dragonwriter 13y ago
> Making a universal email message have bespoke instructions for a specific mail provider. Call me old fashioned but I don't like that. Its all using open standard formats, and the specific schemas are open standards or proposed for standardization (and Google has said that its schema support may change if the schemas change in the standardization process.) Other providers could use it as well. This is how progress happens in open systems. The alternative is either abandoning the open system for new functionality, or just never getting new functionality at all. And its not the provider that is key here, but the client (the fact that for many gmail users the supplier of both the mail service and the mail client is the same makes it easy to confuse the issue.) > Also, I dare say, not so useful for the many of us accessing gmail via Mac devices' mail clients. Yes, features in the Gmail client that aren't included in other clients aren't useful to people using the other clients. I'm not sure why this is noteworthy.
- Smudge 13y ago
  They may be open formats, but you can't just throw Microdata and JSON-LD into an email and expect Gmail to display your actions. You have to register with Google: https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with...
k3n 13y ago
Implementation-specific email headers aren't new, and many providers have been leveraging them in one way or another -- probably since email itself came to be. Outlook is a great example here. It's basically just value-add's for the client. You can still read email in any client, so why would you choose any specific client? I think the onus remains on the content creators, just as it is on the web and elsewhere on the net, that they only use the extended functionality to enhance the content (and not replace it). An example here would be HTML emails -- which, since you said you prefer plain text, I'm sure you hate? But they are common and those that use them know that they need to include a "view on the web" link for clients who don't understand HTML. I do like plain text the best though, as I think that's where email excels, though SMS has some overlap. Ultrafunk Popcorn[1] was my preferred email client for 5+ years, and was an awesome client. Required only a conf file and something silly like 200k of RAM to run. Sadly, development stopped on it awhile back I think, though it probably still works just fine. It's the equivalent of the foobar2000 music player, dead simple and efficient. 1. http://web.archive.org/web/20130116201517/http://ultrafunk.com/popcorn http://web.archive.org/web/20130116201517/http://ultrafunk.c...

swah 13y ago

Is there any way to compose them in Gmail?

d43594 13y ago

Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy? 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well'. Last thing I want in my inbox. Call me a purist but email is for emailing people.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kyrias 13y ago
Few things adhere to the Unix philosophies anymore, and really, why should they?
- d43594 13y ago
  The question you should really be asking is why shouldn't they? The best applications out there do one thing and do it well. Awk, sed, vi(m), emacs, git. Need I go on?
  - infrec 13y ago
    This is simply nonsensical. Even the applications you listed don't just "do one thing". Vim and emacs have a trillion features each. Git has way more features than some other versioning systems. When does "one thing" turn into multiple things? Within the context of the thread - when did gmail stop doing one thing? When they added filters? When they added all of the labs features? With this current announcement? Do one thing and do it well is great but defining the scope of the one thing is not something to be taken trivially.
  - tree_of_item 13y ago
    What is the one thing Emacs does well? Emacs is the polar opposite of the Unix philosophy; it's more in line with the Lisp Machine tradition. Programs like sort, uniq, and grep don't embed interpreters for dynamic languages and provide thousands of different extensions for anything from reading mail to connecting to IRC.
abraininavat 13y ago

dmbaggett 13y ago

Lots of strangely negative reactions here. We (http://inky.com http://inky.com) think this is a positive development and plan to support it as well. We're happy Google has promoted open standards in doing this.

diffsir 13y ago
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planetjones 13y ago
I don't think the reactions are strange at all. Google have a bad track record in implementing things and then abandoning them for one. I want my email to be a consistent experience - not to get some different behavior if I access through a certain device. Email and its simplicity was universal - I saw the same text on my phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. Will every mail sender who makes use of this, include the JSON and an alternative link to achieve the same result. I think this could get very inconsistent very quickly. Fragmenting email is not something I like the idea of. For Google Apps customers' internal mails I think this is useful. For the wider Internet I don't like it.
- dmbaggett 13y ago
  I see your point, but consistency of email display went out the window with HTML email. We (and Google, and hopefully everybody else providing mail readers) put a ton of work into sanitizing HTML before rendering it in the preview pane. This makes mail display a delicate balance between safety and preserving the sender's intent. It's already a far from trivial problem, and is one of the hundred or so non-obvious reasons why making a mail client isn't easy. What's nice about what they've done here is that they've required an additional (but now standard) level of authentication for the senders who want to include this richer, more actionable content. And they haven't hardwired this into Google Plus or some other walled garden. That's welcome, IMO.
  - 13y ago

barapa 13y ago

Can the response include who is clicking the action? For example, if you want to take a quick poll from within an email that is sent to multiple people, can you identify who is voting for what?

navan 13y ago
This is usually done by generating different URLs for different emails. The URLs need to carry access token parameters. See https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/limited-use-access-tokens https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/limited-....

qznc 13y ago

Why don't they support a mechanism which works with plain text emails? E.g. put the JSON stuff into a header field. Btw how would one suggest something like this officially? There seems to be no issue tracker or anything for gmail.

dmbaggett 13y ago
Statistically speaking, nobody sends plain text email any more.
- qznc 13y ago
  Even if you take the spam out of the statistics?

untog 13y ago

The fact that this was posted on the Google Apps blog is telling- I imagine that Google wants to roll this out to Apps users before general Gmail users. I'm surprised by the reaction in here- yes, it's an addition to the standard e-mail system. Do we really want that system to stand absolutely still? If that's the case, why are we cheering so much web browser development? Surely a browser from 1997 should be good enough for anyone?

MrDOS 13y ago
> I imagine that Google wants to roll this out to Apps users before general Gmail users. That'll be a first. Historically, Google has deeply neglected Apps users. My Apps account didn't get G+ until almost a year after it became generally available.
- maratd 13y ago
  > Google has deeply neglected Apps users. That's a funny way of looking at it. I pay Google money for my account so that I have, above all, a reliable system to use for my business. No beta bullshit. And with Google Apps, that's what I get. Regular users are the guinea pigs and once a feature has proven itself year(s) later, it's added to Apps. As someone who runs a business, I'm quite happy with that approach. I get all the latest and greatest on my personal GMail account, I don't need it on my business account.
  - ditojim 13y ago
    Yup - Google hardens consumer for the enterprise.
  - johnmw 13y ago
    Good point. I think in the days before Google starting charging for Apps, many of the users were the tech-head-early-adopter crowd. Which is why many were so disappointed that they got all the new innovations last. I think everyone would be happier if Apps users could signal to Google they would like to be a 'new features beta tester'.
- 13y ago

robspychala 13y ago

super cool. we are doing something similar with Birdseye Mail's Smart Actions http://www.birdseyemail.com/developers http://www.birdseyemail.com/developers ... we opted to reuse open graph tags in favor of creating a new JSON / JavaScript syntax Still really great that Google signed up partners for the rollout. It's a bit of a chicken vs. the egg problem for technologies like this and it seems they have some cool email providers on board to help with the adoption. Regardless of the outcome, this is great for consumption of emails and for users who have trouble dealing with their high volume of email.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

yarrel 13y ago

To be removed in 3..2..

udfalkso 13y ago

How about an "action" to let me archive/delete a message with just one click without opening it?

sisk 13y ago
You can accomplish both of those with keyboard shortcuts. "e" archives it, "#" trashes it. They also work in the list view if you select the messages you're concerned with ("x" to select).

bigtones 13y ago

We were one of the companies to support this during the launch announcement today, and we've been playing with it for the past month or so. It's an awesome feature for transactional emails that require a quick action to be performed - we use it for task notification emails where you can check off a task as complete right within the email client. It's based on an open standard, and plain old HTTP POST so not specifically tied to Gmail.

reddit_clone 13y ago
Again, what is the difference between this and clicking a link? Instead of showing a link , they show a button is it? Adding a bunch of crap into email body is worth that? This is right out of Microsoft's embrace/extend playbook.
- pjscott 13y ago
  Here's a use case: 1. I book a flight, and get a flight confirmation email from the airline. It includes a machine-readable version of my flight info in the metadata. 2. I press a button, and the flight gets added to Google Calendar, or a flight-status tracking app, or a shared travel calendar service for people who fly a lot. Note that this stuff doesn't need to be written by Google; it's an open format. Sound potentially useful?

logvol 13y ago

Sounds like Google's response to Facebook messenger & open graph. Definitely agree with most of the commenter's. Sounds like a huge helper for google apps and the SaaS apps built on there.

notatoad 13y ago

can we expect this data to start feeding into Google Now?

dragonwriter 13y ago
You can expect it to feed Google Now [1] and Google Search [2]. That's a rather major part of the point. [1] https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-now https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-now [2] https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-search https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-search

orangethirty 13y ago

How long till gmail us turned into a hybrid private messaging/gmail system tightly integrated with G+ (more so than now)? Gmail as we know it seems to be on its last legs. Too bad, because it is a good product.

pjscott 13y ago
That's a remarkably dramatic response to Google announcing that (a) you can add structured event metadata to emails in a straightforward open format, and (b) G+ will use this metadata.

QuantumGuy 13y ago

Just need to make sure I am getting this. Actions will make things happen once you open the email right? I am rather confused by this whole concept. Furthermore when will Google give me more control over my inbox like a builtin ifttt system? I mean filters does alot but I want more and not just for gmail but for all Google services. Example certain days I go to the gym but I only go if it is not raining. I wish I could tell calendar schedule gym if not raining. Is that what actions is?

emilymainzer 13y ago

It was very nice interface !