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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 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.
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.
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.