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AMP For Email Is a Terrible Idea (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via TechCrunch, written by Devin Coldewey: Google just announced a plan to "modernize" email with its Accelerated Mobile Pages platform, allowing "engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences." Does that sound like a terrible idea to anyone else? It sure sounds like a terrible idea to me, and not only that, but an idea borne out of competitive pressure and existing leverage rather than user needs. Not good, Google. Send to trash. See, email belongs to a special class. Nobody really likes it, but it's the way nobody really likes sidewalks, or electrical outlets, or forks. It not that there's something wrong with them. It's that they're mature, useful items that do exactly what they need to do. They've transcended the world of likes and dislikes. Email too is simple. It's a known quantity in practically every company, household, and device. The implementation has changed over the decades, but the basic idea has remained the same since the very first email systems in the '60s and '70s, certainly since its widespread standardization in the '90s and shift to web platforms in the '00s. The parallels to snail mail are deliberate (it's a payload with an address on it) and simplicity has always been part of its design (interoperability and privacy came later). No company owns it. It works reliably and as intended on every platform, every operating system, every device. That's a rarity today and a hell of a valuable one.
More important are two things: the moat and the motive. The moat is the one between communications and applications. Communications say things, and applications interact with things. There are crossover areas, but something like email is designed and overwhelmingly used to say things, while websites and apps are overwhelmingly designed and used to interact with things. The moat between communication and action is important because it makes it very clear what certain tools are capable of, which in turn lets them be trusted and used properly. We know that all an email can ever do is say something to you (tracking pixels and read receipts notwithstanding). It doesn't download anything on its own, it doesn't run any apps or scripts, attachments are discrete items, unless they're images in the HTML, which is itself optional. Ultimately the whole package is always just going to be a big , static chunk of text sent to you, with the occasional file riding shotgun. Open it a year or ten from now and it's the same email. And that proscription goes both ways. No matter what you try to do with email, you can only ever say something with it -- with another email. If you want to do something, you leave the email behind and do it on the other side of the moat.
More important are two things: the moat and the motive. The moat is the one between communications and applications. Communications say things, and applications interact with things. There are crossover areas, but something like email is designed and overwhelmingly used to say things, while websites and apps are overwhelmingly designed and used to interact with things. The moat between communication and action is important because it makes it very clear what certain tools are capable of, which in turn lets them be trusted and used properly. We know that all an email can ever do is say something to you (tracking pixels and read receipts notwithstanding). It doesn't download anything on its own, it doesn't run any apps or scripts, attachments are discrete items, unless they're images in the HTML, which is itself optional. Ultimately the whole package is always just going to be a big , static chunk of text sent to you, with the occasional file riding shotgun. Open it a year or ten from now and it's the same email. And that proscription goes both ways. No matter what you try to do with email, you can only ever say something with it -- with another email. If you want to do something, you leave the email behind and do it on the other side of the moat.
What a great way to spread malicious code!
Let's see: AMP for GMAIL = bad. HTTPS Everywhere = BAD, Youtube demonitization schemes left up to algorithms = BAD
Anyone see the pattern? The pattern is that Google thinks it owns the web now.
If you send me an email in anything other than plain text it's not even going to get downloaded from the mailserver.
Despite the headline which appears to hate the idea before it has been seen. I would actually rather see this in action before deciding to poo poo the idea. There just is not yet enough data available to say this is good or bad, it's a giant question mark in my mind.
What I am more concerned with is how quickly this AMP-thing baked into email will be used for phishing and spreading malware. I mean, email is already used for that, but all of a sudden slapping interactivity on top of it will, without a doubt, make things a whole fucking lot worse. Email is a reasonably simple concept and while there are plenty of people who fall for various kinds of scams, it's at least easy enough that even old people can get along with it. Slapping all the issues that modern, interactive "web-apps" bring on there will confuse the hell out of people and, as anyone with half a brain knows, confusion is easy to exploit.
Thankfully, I doubt this will actually amount to much; Google has the habit of coming up with about 200 bad ideas every year that they trot out with a marching band and all, but then those ideas die with a whimper a year later.
Dear Consumer,
It doesn't matter what you want. You'll get what makes us the most profit, and like it.
Fuck You Very Much, and Have a Nice Day.
Hugs and Kisses,
- Your Friendly Neighborhood Free Service Provider
Saying nobody really likes it is easily proven wrong. I do like it. My employees manage their tasks through their mail boxes. Now reports, alerts and what not can be interactive and accompanied by forms where they can take action. Directly in the e-mail client. And once they are done, they move e-mail to the DONE folder. And they can use tags, search, filters, and what not. And suddenly we no longer need to build this functionality for the intranet.
The reason why e-mail is so limited is because back in the day Microsoft and others did not know how to make it secure. Time to move on and stop being a Luddite.
Now we know why they removed the do no evil from their corporate culture.
Clearly Google is past the point of innovation, they are trying to "fix" something that isnt broken and no one really wants. I have my email server strip all media from emails and keep them in quarantine until i see the need for it and my client NEVER downloads anything from a server that isnt my own.
Email is for time insensitive communications and has no need for fancy pictures or themes. If you cant get your point across with out graphics then you best schedule a meeting because you will more than likely need to answer alot of questions after your presentation.
Back to the google, personally i cant wait until they fade in to obscurity like myspace or yahoo. The time is coming, we just need another competitor.
So this means we return to text/plain as that's fast to load?
While I completely agree that email is good as it is and this is a monstrosity, I'm not so sure I agree there is a "moat" between email and applications.
Applications send email all the time. Email with links/buttons, which when clicked, interact with the applications. It's pretty cool, actually. So there's all kinds of interaction going on.
But - it's cool because it works with the limited tool set that email already has.
So maybe there is a moat - with a wide, comfortable drawbridge, but I agree that doesn't mean that we should drain the moat and fill it in with concrete.
Yep, I'm done with a lot of nonsense so I'm returning to the old days of putting my own server online. Not hosted by somebody else, completely under my own control.
My Web page (No Java)
My Email
My FTP
My NNTP (Newsgroups including Usenet)
My encryption
My responsibility
My Control.
> "Nobody really likes it, but it's the way nobody really likes sidewalks, or electrical outlets, or forks"
perhaps it is because I am old, but I rather like the type of discord that email provides. I abhor new platforms for 'communication' such as twitter-for-twits and facebook, for those who spend more time documenting the fake shit they do than actually doing the stuff they supposedly do. The idea that someone can say something in 250 words or less and believe that its enough to persuade someone is ludicrous and practically justifies slapping their teachers across the face. A persuasive argument requires points and counter points; all packaged and detailed through the body of the single letter. Think of it as opening, or closing, arguments in a trial. Would you want your attorney standing up during closing arguments, addressing the jury and just say "find my client innocent or you suck. #freemyclient #emojisarecool!" Yet this is were social media has led an entire generation of millennials who literally now graduate public schools not knowing how to write in cursive, write a check, or properly fill out an envelope and apply postage.
Didn't google make a claim about 10yrs ago that they were revolutionizing email with an entirely new product?? I believe they called it 'Wave'. How did that turn out for them? It appears that, at least for that project, the mayan calendar did, in fact, cause the end of its civilization (ie they pulled the plug on it at the end of 2012)
I guess AMP for slashdot would be a fantastic idea.
Why does that site even exist?
No company owns it. It works reliably and as intended on every platform, every operating system, every device. That's a rarity today and a hell of a valuable one.
This USED to be true, BUT people and businesses are OVERWHELMINGLY moving their E-mail service to Office365 AND Google Apps.
I'll say it again THIS IS A TRAP. Over 60% of mailboxes may very well already be on these services..... As this number approaches 70%, 80%, 90%..... STANDARDIZATION WILL BEGIN TO UNRAVEL. The trend is that E-mail is going to become a Microsoft and Google technology, BECAUSE everybody is moving to the cloud, and as it stands now; MS and Google have a Duopoly in this industry.
What about Let's Encrypt. My website is https for no additional cost.
Sorry but email is not simple. Just try to validate an email address. The spec for that alone is nightmare inducing.
Then add all the people who do need more than ASCII and take a look at the horrible encoding mess you will get.
Heck, try writing a parser which just extracts attached files so they do not clobber up your EMail Archive.
While I can see the need for something like email, the current implementation is horrible.
"engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences."
WTF does that even mean.
I have to read an email, so I'm already engaging with it.
I have to reply to emails, so they're already actionable, and so interactive to an extent.
People like this twunt are the reason we have a 'Wanker Jar' in the meeting room at work.
It's like a swear jar, but for PR wankers. And it's surprisingly effective at training them to converse in a concise,meaningful way instead of spouting vague terms.
Great write up BeauHD (if I understand Slashdot's author reference). There is exactly nothing wrong with email, it's one of the most useful and reliable things in the tech world. Junkmail is annoying, so sadly companies have to spend a lot dealing with it, but other than that I wouldn't touch it.
Google making it interactive is a step in the wrong direction. They know just how critical email is and just want a way to turn it into the next mini-Facebook. No way, no how.
I can't see any organization accepting this junk idea. Personal email? I sure hope people are smarter than that.
Email is good for non time critical communication and with push email, it could be used more like an IM, yet you can search the messages as individuals. Searching in IMs is pretty horrible, since there are no topics included with the message. You have people and all conversations (unless you start a new channel each time) are all mixed. Current email clients are a bit sluggish for it, but that could be made better, works ok currently still.
Now i don't want to fill questionares and have the emails change on me. The email is good, because i can check back what was said, but i don't go back to old emails, if i don't need to. There's no reason for "interactivity" as descriped by google.
Now if big file sending was made better (Thunderbird has the filelink thing, but instead of using 3rd party services, it should be part of email system) and if the "additional chat protocols" feature of thunderbird was not dead, i'd be set and i could use my email client for everything. Instead i now have email, 3 different IMs and file sending is still a pain. Send.firefox.org is not included in file link, atleast not yet. Also encryption should be more easier to achieve somehow. Nobody uses it.
The good news is we can safely ignore them, as they cannot coerce and punish people to follow their wishes by threatening with a lower rank on their search engine.
This works as long as people are putting up with them. And until they notice "Page works in Firefox and even Edge but fails in Chrome and Safari", and the page owners also tell them why, i.e. because Google and Apple deliberately broke their browsers.
I'd dare to say that if they started rejecting the likes of Let's Encrypt, which would cause nearly every non-commercial site to instantly be considered insecure (and with HSTS this means unreachable), people would very quickly notice this, and they'd also notice quickly that the page works fine with alternative browsers.
And you know people: Given the choice between being able to reach their wanted content and being secure, they throw security to the ground before stomping over it. They would instantly dump Chrome and install Firefox instead if that's all it takes to get back onto their page.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
To me, that looks like the mother of all exploit vectors.
I switched my iPhone from using Google to DuckDuckGo for web searches because of AMP. So f*****g announced and intrusive. Now they have the arrogance to mess with email? Oh well I donâ(TM)t use gmail anyway because I already find the Google way with email so annoying. I guess enough people just go along with that this crap continues.
Seriously. In the past, people were happy about new features, excited even, asking when they're going to come and how they can use them, with boards and media being abuzz with the previews and reviews and the how-tos and whatnot.
Today, the first question everyone asks when a new feature gets announced is "How do I turn it off?"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, today you can get your own SSL certificate from a few fly by night companies, bury Google and Apple effectively control who gets to publish valid SSL certificates and have demonstrated willingness to use that hammer.
While I agreed with your other point, this is just not true. Google and other browser companies can only add and remove trusted Root CAs. This doesn't allow them to control over end-entities that get issues SSL certificates. Removing trust from a specific root is a nuclear option, that lacks any kind of finite control. If Google decided they don't like Org ABC, there is nothing they could do to prevent Org ABC from getting an SSL cert that would be trusted by Chrome.
Where is apple tagging stuff to the bottom of emails?
And I'm thankful for that! Many months ago, I made the switch to Inbox by Gmail and haven't looked back since. I can now create and schedule reminders *IN MY EMAIL* that also carry over to my calendar. So now I have a representation of something I need to get done in the two most important apps I use. And Inbox also allows me to "snooze" an email so I can deal with it later. My kid needs to dress up like an old person for a 100-day party at school? Cool! I appreciate the email two weeks ahead of time, but I don't really need to pay attention to it until the night before. Snoozed!
The list goes on and on for how Inbox is superior to basic Gmail. I've shown it to friends and co-workers and told them to give it a week to get used to the new ecosystem (it really is a different way to think about email) and the far majority of them stick with it and love it.
The original VentureBeat article states "One of the key benefits of AMP for email will be that content within an email can be updated, and recipients will be able to browse email content much like they would a web page." Given that Booking.com is already signed up, this means when my wife and I are trading emails about a vacation we're planning, we could have up-to-date search results in the email without having to load it up elsewhere or be looking at an out-dated screen capture?! Nice! Or someone can email me an article about a breaking news event and the AMP content actually loads more up-to-date articles along side it (like Google recommendations for similar pages in search results)?! Nice! Or I no longer get the annoying "You are not replying to the latest message" alert and the email simply loads up the other emails and/or combines them all into a single thread and/or gives me actionable options that are better than closing the current message and looking for the latest one?! Nice!
The TechCrunch article reads like the same people who screamed, "I don't want internet on my phone! I just want a phone!" and 10+ years later they can't live without internet on their phone because they simply could not envision that having internet on a phone would mean much more than browsing desktop websites on a tiny browser.
I'm certainly not saying AMP for email is going to be fantastic, but I'm certainly not going be a detractor before I see some examples simply because I pine for the days of Pine.
Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
New version
Every email program attempts to expand until it is an operating system......
Does it run in Lynx and Pine?
I am amazed that nobody has said anything about the legal problems.
"No, your honor, I did not say that I would pay him 1k. I said 100."
"Your honor, he sent me this email that clearly states... 100? What the hell? Your Honor, he changed this after the fact!"
"Motion to dismiss."
This isn't new by the way. Would you believe that this was a thing in WebTV 20 years ago? I remember someone I used to communicate with on WebTV who taught me how to embed the required HTML in emails to put things like autoplay music, backgrounds and graphics. It basically looked like a webpage where you could send emails. He'd done it with all sorts of Mortal Kombat stuff. I was a Mortal Kombat nerd back then and thought it was the coolest thing ever and did it too. It only functioned like this however for WebTV users. Viewing the emails on anything else you just saw some ignored html tags and images. It was a novel, but bad idea then and its less novel and still a bad idea today.
Yes lets take the most rock solid pillar of internet communication and extend it so it only works right in Chrome Broswers.
What a Microsoft-1990s move. It's the reason everyone hated microsoft for a decade. Embrace and extend.
But they never had the gall to go this big. Why not embrace and extend TCIP too google? They already are doing DNS so it wouldn't be that hard. Facebook's VPN might give it a whirl too.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
AMP is already not that great. This doesn't need to be in email
Also, stop trying to fuck up emails.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
Just because the idea is blatantly self-serving, doesn't mean it's wrong in general.
Yes, Google may indirectly benefit from HTTPS everywhere. However, HTTPS everywhere IS needed, because the parade of malicious actors never stops and every layer of security we add can only be a good thing.
HTML email already exists right? And AMP is like a stripped down version of HTML.
So wouldn't this really be about trying to clean up HTML email, rather than about trying to make email as a whole more fancy and interactive?
Seems like I was right to open up a few ProtonMail accounts sometime ago, I knew Google stupidity for trendy crap and messing with stuff that shouldn't be messed with would eventually catch their more traditional services and platforms...
Well, perhaps they are sane enough to make it an opt-in feature, depending on the real intentions behind the move.
To me, it's pretty simple: the more you enable "advanced features" in a given service or platform, the more potential it has to be exploited for all the bad reasons.
And it's ok when the potential threat makes sense for the service.. but e-mail shouldn't be messed up with.
What's the current source of most problems regarding e-mails right now? It matches perfectly with AMP description: "engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences". It's being able to click on a link with a suspicious URL behind it that people don't care or know to check, which ends up in phishing scams, ransomware and whatnot.
Oooh, but Google will make sure this new thing is secure. Like the Play Store?
Seems it's time to switch to a platform that knows when to keep the right things as is. It's fine to give alternatives to the interface itself, with stuff like Inbox. I didn't like it, others did, it's an option.
But if I wanted engaging, interactive and actionable something, I wouldn't be reading my e-mails. Not everything needs to be like that, and there are good reasons for it.
No company owns it [email].
That's the "problem" Google is fixing.
There are areas in which Google is destructive.
You cannot.
Like FTP is something buried deep into the story of internet.
You should not.
It works. If it works, you ain't fix it.
You can modernize SMTP , though.
For example, if the client is online during the delivery attempt you can/should deliver straight to it.
If not, to the mailbox.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
"engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences."
All of those words have to do with marketing. What user really wants their spam to be more "engaging, interactive, and actionable"? "Actionable" especially. That is Google-speak for "the user can initiate a purchase directly from the page". This change has absolutely nothing to do with providing a feature to users.
(actually, an ex did once say in response to a stated wish for ads to be illegal with the question "but how would we know what to buy?", but that's one reason why she's an ex.)
Ah, but your e-mail client will download e-mail attachments from the web on its own. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2231
Also, it will run scripts on its own.... if those are Office macros and you are using Outlook.
It still costs server load and electricity.
Without JavaScript, senders cannot control their content. Like to say different things at different times. To enforce DRM. To self destruct.
Nobody under 20 uses it. They use whatever proprietary messaging app their friends use this year. And they are getting older every year.
Middle aged women use Facebook messenger.
Email is dead. Get over it.
Not quite true. It's possible to maintain an "Untrusted Certificates" list - Windows does this already - and simply decide that you don't like site A so their certificate goes on the banned list. Since the Chrome installer is often run as admin, it could add certs to the "Untrusted Certificates" store for the local computer, which would also break the site for Edge and any applications relying on the Windows certificate store. While I'm sure it would quickly be noticed, it'd still be disruptive.
"Now we have good, reliable, low-cost encryption of user sessions!"
"Yeah, but whattabout phishing? You didn't think about phishing DID YOU?! If you cannot fix 100% of the problem then there's no point in fixing anything. It has to be perfect or else it's useless!!!"
Says no one who has ever been effective or efficient at anything, any time, anywhere.
The incremental cost is negligible and in many (most now?) cases HTTPS connections provide better throughput.
Citation: I work on quantum-safe crypto.
- chrish
The incremental cost is negligible on a single server. Now scale to the internet and "internet of things". We're no longer speaking about an insignificant amount of energy and processing power.
I know you're a wicked quantum dude but stop thinking small.
Citation: Physicist
I just got over having to pay for a certificate just like I got over having top pay for a domain name.
The Internet isn't free. Information doesn't 'know' anything, much less if it's 'free'. Given a choice people will not pay for anything unless the free is not useful.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I know what my next startup is now: Email sanitizer, redirect all your mail through me, I'll take care of you :)