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Gmail Cracks Down on Third-Party Notifiers
crtfdgk writes "Recently, Google's gmail service has attempted to change login protocols to block third-party gmail notifiers that alert you to new email. Google has now taken it one step further and created a word-identification script filter as part of the login process. Personally, I find Google's gmail notifier annoying since it sits in my taskbar and doesn't have popup notification, unlike many other worthy Firefox or Mozilla plugins that feature gmail notification. Shouldn't I be free to use whatever third party software to check my email? Will we be seeing controls on browsers that can view gmail next?"
I notice no word verification... I like the google gmail notifier it does do pop ups. :) plus you can choose "tell me again" to see the pop up again if you missed it.
Third party notifications will cause Google to loose money on their adsense revenue. Simply put, if i was in google's position I would do something similar. Coincidently, some sites, like mine, rely on adsense revenue in order to stay online/stay as a free service. Thankfully, adsense pays well enough by people visiting a site and clicking on a link that it is a viable solution if you have a target audience (like the stock market or whatever).
I've also heard rumors of people making $50/click off of adsense which is absurd! Hence, why Google wants every dime they can get!
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artlu.net
"Google has now taken it one step further and created a word-identification script filter as part of the login process." In fact if you go there now you won't see this. This is part of Gmail's anti bruteforcing stuff. If you get a password wrong so many times it starts requiring you to enter a word to try and stop an automated bruteforcing script. GMAIL ISN'T BLOCKING YOUR 3RD PARTY MAIL NOTIFIER JUST YOU FOR BEING STUPID!
Instant Messenger services change their protocols occasionally but they don't block 3rd party apps
Bullshit! Yahoo just did this very thing. They changed thier protocol in their new releasd that broke 3rd party apps. Yahoo, like others, do not publish protcol documentation or supply APIs, it is up to 3rd party programmers to reverse engineer it to get the 3rd party apps to work.
IM services have tried repeatedly to block third-party apps. Both AIM and Yahoo have tried to block third-party clients.
Yahoo blocking
AIM blocking
"AOL made changes to their proprietary protocol (called OSCAR) that would ferret out anyone who wasn't using the official client."
I'm sure he meant labels, but he's right. It doesn't tell when there's new mail in the labels, just the inbox. I submitted feedback about that to them. I suggest others do the same thing if it's something you'd like to see.
...Opera support...
Note that Opera 7.6 (currently in beta/development) has enhanced Gmail support. I just saw there is actually an entire website devoted to Gmail on Opera.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
The 3rd party scenario is relatively CPU and network intensive. You have to handshake a TCP connection, then poll the server, then close the connection again. And you have to do it every X minutes (and most users will set X to as small a number as they can).
Google can set it up so that the client establishes a TCP connection and then using periodic keepalives, keeps it up. Then instead of the client polling every X minutes, the server can simply send the client notification (one little packet) when there is new mail. By eliminating polling and TCP handshake overheads, it's a little more server-friendly. It might require a little more RAM to keep track of all those TCP connections, but RAM is cheap and each connection only consumes a few bytes.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Your call : does your Bill of Rights define all of the rights which you have?
No, it specifically limits the US Government's ability to curtail our rights. Our Constitution specically states that any rights not enumerated in it are reserved to the states or the people.
As a side note, it applies to our government, not private citizens and contracts that they undertake. Which is why , when people start screaming "Company X violated my 1st amendment rights" I realize they have no idea about what they speak.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
According to Gmail's feature wishlist : (you can get this by going to help and hitting send feedback)
done! Address book import
we'll try Opera support
we'll try Ability to send messages with HTML formatting
we'll try POP3 access
working on it Plain HTML version of Gmail
working on it Ability to save a draft
So this is not entirely out of the question.
Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA
Article IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
If you blog it...
About a week back I downloaded GMail Notifier the official alternative. Then I fired up Ethereal. There is indeed a backdoor protocol. Though from what I can tell from the HTTP GET string it's protected to high hell. GMail notifier sends an HTTP GET query to the GMail server, the GMail server sends back the number (and almost only the number) of messages. Here's the dump:
/gmail?ui=pb&q=label%3A%5Ei%20label%3A%5Eu HTTP/1.1f 5ZeIhRBn0aSXNXqg9mNrvBpyrfx0ImAGmONYgxv0w=; PREF=ID=446f57901cff551a:TM=1093681541:LM=10937355 79:TB=2:S=QbSoqBBCOK7nKj0f; S=gmail=NK86NtM1S-k:gmproxy=rYXDOT5E60U
f 5ZeIhRBn0aSXNXqg9mNtCkJwBg2BEl1DvtQ6bT250=;Domain= .google.com;Path=/;Expires=Tue, 26-Aug-2014 23:45:55 GMT
GET
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; GNotify 1.0.21.0)
Host: gmail.google.com
Cache-Control: no-cache
Cookie: en_US; GV=fea7b8d648-b9be26d2425258708508713e52327ed1; GMAIL_AT=6d9cba730be1a490-fea7ca187f; SID=AV8H4FYfeDJ-4lwENnL9kzcyiSJshVSKK2xixnjpjWgHs
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Set-Cookie: SID=AfvmInwaGVRkESW3REmGuiyongiyNzyqguZePHuQUyJ9s
Cache-control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Server: GFE/1.3
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 23:45:55 GMT
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I however absolutely hate the color scheme involved with Notifier, so I will NOT be using it until they improve that. GTray (http://torrez.us/gtray), my app of choice, still works just fine as of about 10 minutes ago. If Google really does close it off at some point, I think we should petition them to open up a version like Google API with similar restrictions.
> The 3rd party scenario is relatively CPU and network intensive. [snip]
> Google can set it up so that the client establishes a TCP connection and then using periodic keepalives, keeps it up.
The official Gmail notifier simply uses standard http/https requests to do its work. The only difference between it and the "unofficial" method is that it retrieves a binary encoded data block and processes that.
See these forum postings for more details I documented:
Official Gmail Notifier protocol documented
--Phil.
"Shouldn't I be free to use whatever third party software to check my email?"
Sure. You're free to use any software you want. And Google is free to not allow you to use any software with their service that you don't want. And since you're not paying them anything, you don't have much leverage to get them to change their policy, do you?
It's a free service. Take it or leave it.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!