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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?"
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?
My feeling is that if it's a *FREE* service (meaning you don't pay Google anything to use Gmail) then no, you shouldn't be free to use whatever third party software you choose.
Sorry but when you're not even a paying customer, I feel no love.
Who says Google is trying to stifle 3rd party apps? It is still beta, they are still fixing things, and nothing has been finalized. Instant Messenger services change their protocols occasionally but they don't block 3rd party apps.
Either way, if you've got a Gmail account, be sure to give them your two cents.
I've been trying to imagine why google would do such an un-google thing. Perhaps they're worried about coders going to next level, and coding up entire gmail readers--or incorporating gmail account readers into something like Thunderbird. Adding that word-identification script filter to the login process would certainly prevent something like that--but also has the side effect of blowing up the seemingly innocuous gmail email notifier.
Which leads me to wonder how google's own system tray email notification program can still work. Obviously it's still possible, in theory, to do this same thing in spite of the word-identification script filter. Perhaps google will publish an API that 3rd party developers can use solely for the use of gmail notification abilities in their own programs.
I can't believe (thought it's definitely possible) that their goal would be to blow up only the 3rd party email notification programs. It seems like 3rd party notification programs would serve to only promote the use of gmail. And, as far as I know, they gain no ad revenue directly from their gmail notification system tray icon.
They actually publish an API for doing (limited) google searches in 3rd party programs, which seems like a more overt way to avoid ads and avoid google's revenue source. Maybe that'll be history soon, who knows? I hope this isn't an indication of their new corporate policy and philosophy.
-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."
This is still a free beta email service. I can't believe I am reading a complaint about a beta service. You are there to fix bugs and offer suggestions.
/. commentary...
"Will we be seeing controls on browsers that can view gmail next?"
fuckin
Since when does it not have popup notification?
They have a right to do this. I like Google's services as much as the next person, but I think it's a bit silly to unanimously praise GMail. Google is a company like any other, and I hope this little incident reminds the Google fanboys of that. We need to be wary and responsible.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
If I had to guess, I'd have to say this is the problem with unofficial notifiers.
Whenever a user logs on, their entire mail spool is loaded into memory for fast access (since hard drive access is so slow.) This is normally not a problem, since only a small percentage of users will be actively online at a time. However, when there is an email notifier logging on every five minutes checking for new emails, this creates increased server load for Google's servers. Google's Notifier doesn't have this problem, since it just waits for a packet to be sent out by Google.
That's my guess, anyway. I doubt they're doing it just to be annoying.
There is no word-identification process. Login is just the same as before.
To slashdot editors: Please, verify information before posting it.
This article appears to be nothing more than speculation on the part of some disgruntled third party app user who, for some reason beyond me, is annoyed that a *BETA* service is changing things up a bit. It doesn't even have a link to a real news story to back it up. Slashdot, you should be ashamed for approving this crap, it does nothing but tarnish your name.
Personally, I find Google's gmail notifier annoying since it sits in my taskbar and doesn't have popup notification
I use Google's official Gmail notifier and I like it alot better than the firefox extension I used to use. It does feature popup notification, so I don't know what they were referring to. The only difference is you dont have to have a browser open and you're not going to get in trouble for using it, which I think is a benefit.
People shouldn't be too quick to hack up their own solutions to something that is still in BETA.
There probably is very good reasons for them blocking it.
I have no doubts they will eventually have a developer API written for Gmail, like they do for other things on their site.
There's also damn good reasons to word verification filters -- brute force attacks.
Gmail is neato, but I don't think it's good enough for the power user.
.. because it's still in its beta? :) They're working on mail forwarding and a better contacts list. It's FAST too. I didn't see their spam filters in action, and I hope I won't have to. But it's there. What more would a 'power user' need?
Anyway, the filters do their job, 'labels' are neat, threading didn't fail me (yet?). The interface is cute
Not if your e-mail is Google's property. Google has every right to do whatever they want with their property. Anybody stupid enough to use a so-called "free" e-mail provider for anything serious deserves what they get.
How? There are no ads shown on the gmail inbox screen, and there are no ads shown by gmail's own notifier.
We all know Google has been deemed to be the best positioned company to compete with Microsoft. The big fear of course is that MS will use their desktop monopoly to blur the barrier between the offline and online worlds and make sure their offerings overtake Google in market share terms.
Now, take a look at these videos (http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/productinfo/co nceptvid/default.aspx) and you'll see that Longhorn will have this standard pop-up notification API that can be used by applications to inform the user of events. It is used prominently in these demos to show email reception.
Naturally, I would expect this to work with Exchange and possibly Hotmail (but what if Outlook/Outlook Express use it... See below), but not with Gmail.
Why is this important? Because if Gmail takes over the Web mail market, which could very well happen by 2006 given their good feature set and experience with applications at this scale, users will become accustomed to this functionality. Google will fiercely market the notifier applet to their users and everyone will have it, and they won't care less when the Longhorn applet can't notify them about new messages in their Gmail. And considering how many people I know who only have a Web mail account, I think this would allow Google to prevail by meshing and extending their user experience right into their desktops.
Then again, given that they're thinking of implementing POP access and that MS mail clients may as well use this feature, this may all be a moot point...
The revolution will not be televised.
Even better, get an IMAP account from an independent Email provider which also offers Web access. Changing Email addresses whenever you (have to) switch ISPs is just too much.
I don't really get this rant. First of all, there's no word identification filter in the login process. Second, if he doesn't like gmail notifier, don't use it. Thirdly, I highly doubt the changes are solely to disturb the third party tools. More likely, they're working on improvents (which shouldn't come as a surprise since it's still in beta).
Gmail has not published a offical api yet to access there webmail.
/. servers if everyone tried to post at the exact same time, They would slow to a crawl..
Right now these third party apps work by logging into the gmail account and pulling up the records, its just like you going to the webpage and logging in. This requires there system to access and cache every message in your inbox.
Imaging what would happen to the
This is what they are trying to prevent, thousands of third party checkers slowing down there system. I would be willing to bet once they have there gmail API stablized they will publish something like they have for the google search API, allowing third party programs to PROPERLY check the system without using excess resources.
Personal Website
i can't believe this pap gets modded up. e-mail you write is their property, huh? where did you learn this?
Oh cool... so... let's extend that to music or other copyright material...
"Why is it that copyright holders don't like a third party to distribute their music. They're getting free publicity, it's no cost to them, and it makes your product more useful, for dog's sake!"
</sarcasm>
The original post is a troll. I just checked my google now. No word verification on it at all. I even logged out and logged back in again.
Yeah same here... I tried it on 3 browsers (cleaning out the history and cache on each one) to make sure.
- Gmail could offer a checkbox in the logon screen (a parameter to pass to the input form) that says in effect "show NEW email only".
- Alternatively, they could show the list of new emails along with the captcha, so that third-party notifiers would have the info they need without requiring the heavy load
- Google could publish an API for third-party notifiers to register the IP address:port pair to which the user wants a new mail notification to be sent, converting from a polling to message-based mechanism.
These would be good things to do with software during beta-testing...like now.[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
What exactly would be the point of having a gmail account if you are only accessing it through a pop3 interface? You would be storing the email on your hard drive so the gig of storage space doesn't matter, and you would be accessing it with a desktop application, so Google's nifty UI wouldn't matter either.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Even if google incorporated word identification in their login (and they didn't), that wouldn't block third party email notifiers. Your email notifier has a person to use as a resource. You.
Your email notifier would just have to ask you to identify the word in the png every so often. Barely even inconvenient.
But they didn't do that anyway. Whatever.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
It's all about Google's Business model. They need to show you advertisments to help pay for the storage space, bandwidth, and development. They want you to log in and check your mail manually. Everytime an automated tool checks your mail for you they lose advertising potential and their stats of how many hits they get per second/hour/day are skewed. Being able to reliably tell their customers how many people are seeing their ads probably drove most of that.
Shouldn't I be free to use whatever third party software to check my email?
If you don't like their policies, they'll refund your money.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
...and not a bunch of FUD, here is a legitimate reason for blocking 3rd party notifiers. If everyone is free to develop their own apps, they could run into similar problems as sites serving rss feeds. As it is now, any damn fool can write themself an aggregator, and as a result many do not work as they are supposed to. Instead of only checking for changes every hour or so, some allow the user to check for updates every minute. As a result of that, the aggregators end up forming a DDOS attack on the server hosting the feed. If Google controls the notifiers for gmail, they can ensure that they do not suffer similar problems.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Rights are inherent to human existence. The US Bill of Rights is a way of saying what the government explicitly cannot do, as those restrictions were very important to the original founders. There were also many who did not want a Bill of Rights, for the reason that people (like you) would get stupid and think that the rights stated are the only ones you have. Like many people before you, you get the entire idea of rights completely wrong.
Where on earth did the author get the idea that:
A) That there IS a word logon system currently implemented.
B) That said word logon system was to block third party systems from interoperating with Google.
Finally, why was this put on Slashdot when there is absolutely no link to any article whatsoever to backup the few sentences that make up this story? Since when is some guy's short four sentence oppinion the ENTIRE story, without giving any examples whatsoever?
Shouldn't I be free to use whatever third party software to check my email?
It's called "don't use gmail if you don't like the terms".
Why the fuck does everyone think they can do whatever they want with things they choose to use? You don't like the way gmail works? Don't fucking use it you stupid wanker. Quit being a bitchy little cunt and go get a regular e-mail account for Christ's sake. It's not that fucking complicated.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Google has now taken it one step further and created a word-identification script filter as part of the login process.
/. homepage.
This is true, if you consider mis-typing your password 5 times part of your normal "login process", otherwise, it still works like it always did, as the word identification script does not kick in until after you have mis-typed your password 5 times (seriously! go try!)
Personally, I find Google's gmail notifier annoying since it sits in my taskbar and doesn't have popup notification
Thats great and all except it DOES have pop up notification (not only does it popup, but you can right click the google icon on your tray and have it "tell you again")
Shouldn't I be free to use whatever third party software to check my email?
YES, you should be free to use whatever third party software to check YOUR (POP3/hosted/payed for) email. However, Google is also free to NOT allow you to do so with your free gmail account. There's nothing to argue about, if you don't like it, dont use it.
Will we be seeing controls on browsers that can view gmail next?
yes
Why was this article even posted to slashdot? There werent even links to outside sources (besides Gmail itself). This is just one guy writing up some stupid (wrong) comments, and it's on the freekin
"Recently, Google's gmail service has attempted to change login protocols to block third-party gmail notifiers that alert you to new email."
So, the two million byte question is when will people accept the fact that Google is just as "evil" as half the other companies out there despite its professed black sheep good-guy policy? Right here, we have Google striving to lock 3rd parties out of its email client, something universally hated when it come to MSN and Yahoo IM's, while Google itself is happily absorbing as many 3rd party features into it's core service as possible ala Windows. Hell, Google is a quasi-dictionary now as well as advertising service and potentially an online store front for ecommerce in the near future. Even there IPO was rigged in order to put them in the best position possible by feeding off wildly speculatory and inflated stock... At least until they realized the market wasn't going to play that game.
Personally I have no problem with this. Business is business. But I'm just wondering when people will take the blinders off and realize Google is just another MSN, Yahoo or Windows, and not the cool counter e-culture phenomenom masses worship.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Gmail is a service provided freely by Google. If they chose to disallow you from using something they do not want you to use with their service, that is their business. If you do not like that, you stop using that service or you follow what they want you to do.
It's that simple, folks.