
Email Markup in Gmail - elwell
https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/
======
TimWolla
Note that this only is available to high volume senders
([https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/registering-
with-...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/registering-with-
google)):

> Consistent history of sending a high volume of mail from your domain (order
> of hundred emails a day minimum to Gmail) for a few weeks at least.

~~~
jusob
I have a very small SaaS and I was approved. I don't send hundred of e-mail to
other e-mail addresses daily, but I do send a lot of e-mails to myself (server
alerts and notifications). Approval process is very easy and takes 2 minutes,
it is worth applying.

~~~
TimWolla
You said it “takes 2 minutes”: Is it 2 minutes to apply or 2 minutes to apply
_and_ get approved?

~~~
jusob
2 minutes to apply. Approval is manual, so it depends on the day and time and
the availability of the Google employee. Less than 48 hours for me.

~~~
TimWolla
Thanks. I'll have a second look at the feature then.

------
cyberferret
FWIW, this has been around for a long while now. I like being able to do
things like confirm a sign up to a service, close support tickets, get
shipping ETAs etc. with just one click on the global Inbox view rather than
having to open an email up.

Looking to incorporate these into our own SaaS apps too, as soon as I get some
spare time. I think this is a step in the right direction to reduce Inbox
fatigue. Here's hoping that Google will be vigilant enough to stop people
abusing this service.

~~~
shimon
That's why they have an approval process for these features. It would be
really terrible if phishing attacks could exploit "track package" or "check-in
for flight" buttons.

~~~
mderazon
I don't see how this can be abused really.

The most it can do is send a GET request to a remote server

~~~
Kudos
It increases the perception of legitimacy.

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bradleybuda
(self-link)

When this first launched, we found the technical docs for integrators to be a
bit lacking, so wrote this up:
[http://blog.meldium.com/home/2014/5/19/setting-up-gmail-
inbo...](http://blog.meldium.com/home/2014/5/19/setting-up-gmail-inbox-
actions)

It's Rails-centric, but will likely be helpful to integrators in other
languages. Hope it's helpful!

~~~
cyberferret
Nice write up. Definitely helpful, and bookmarked for future reference.

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nilved
This is a bad thing. Gmail needs to be e-mail and nothing more or this is EEE.

~~~
matt4077
Why can email not evolve? Structured data in markup works well on the web.
It's open and could be implemented by any client.

~~~
beefsack
It's only "open" in that they detail the spec they've come up with. Email has
been so useful and resilient only because it's an open standard which is
broadly agreed on and adopted.

Once the big players start adding custom features on top of existing protocols
we start seeing fragmentation and parts of the market being cornered off. Once
people start depending on this custom functionality, the vendor usually starts
raising the walls to lock people in (see GTalk -> Hangouts.)

~~~
erikpukinskis
You're talking about some kind of neoliberal openness, where open means "the
big players agreed to it and it conforms to political ideas about structure".

That's not my definition of open. My definition open is you can access the
spec for free without limitation, and use, modify, and redistribute it as you
see fit.

If I am feeling grandiose I will concede that openness requires not just
access, but easy access and usability by all stakeholders. That's a little
radical, but the point is just that there's a degree of accessibility implied
in the above. If you have to crawl through a snake pit to get the source
perhaps that's not really open.

But your definition, which requires buy-in from Oracle and PepsiCo in order to
be "open"... I think I reject that definition.

~~~
huac
How could you modify this schema and expect it to work with the other players?

~~~
erikpukinskis
The same way Google could modify the schema and expect it to work with old
clients: graceful fallback.

------
Navarr
There are a lot of complaints on this as if it's a new features.

This is quite an old feature - and one I love

------
i336_
Oooooh, so that's how this[1] works! Wondered what sort of infrastructure was
surrounding that, now I have a general idea.

Cool.

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/NGqqwad.png](http://i.imgur.com/NGqqwad.png)

NB, I can't see anything that specifically provides exactly this type of
button in the API, and arbitrary buttons are sadly unlikely to be made
available. [EDIT: Actually you can - see comment]

(Did anyone notice imgur being unable to upload earlier? It was 503ing out a
few hours ago when I first went to post this comment.)

~~~
lexicality
[https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/go-
to-a...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/go-to-
action#view_action)

~~~
i336_
Wooop, I totally missed that, thanks very much.

So now we know exactly how Monorail does it, that's really neat.

------
arjie
I would love to be able to do this for internal email within a Google Apps for
Work domain, etc.

~~~
xd1936
Why can't you? I mean, their examples in the link even show how to implement
this with a simple Google Apps Script project.

~~~
arjie
Huh, this has been available for a while so I actually didn't realize this was
a new announcement. I was hoping the registration would be less strict if
you're only sending within your own domain, but this is good enough really.

~~~
HappyTypist
It is. You don't need to register if you are sending from your own domain to
your own domain.

~~~
pritambaral
From what I read, it's to your own _mailbox_ , not domain. "x@gmail.com" was
the example used.

------
kennydude
I kinda like this. Some big players are adding these to emails, and you can
easily add the parsing to a third-party client (Inbox, where this appears in,
hurts my head so I refuse to use it)

------
joering2
From their form: Is your email Promotional or has a Promotional Intent or is a
Sollicitation?

I like how you can answer both "no" and "yes" so that they will manually
review.

------
ChrisArchitect
[2015]

------
mark_l_watson
To bad it won't work for sending invites to friends for group hikes, with a
map, etc.

That said, I tend to only use gmail for travel related email so reservations
get into my calendar. For everything else I try to use my own domain on
FastMail, or sometimes ProtonMail.

~~~
cyberferret
I think it is possible to achieve what you want (hiking invites). It may mean
writing a small web service (AWS Lambda?) which can respond to the call to
action in the script.

Not so practical for a one off event, but if you were doing this all the time,
you could build a service that offered this sort of facility to the masses.

------
xfalcox
I would love to have a standard way to get Glanceable Newsletters for the
summary in the open source Discourse project.

------
callmeed
Feels like this will get (over|ab)used by the same people who have already
done it with email newsletters and promotions.

I google search for "birthday gift for mom" and now some retailer who has
already emailed me a similar promotion will get that in the top of my search
results? Meh.

~~~
andrewguenther
That's absolutely not how this works. You can't just add a card to an
arbitrary search term. There are only four such schemas supported (event,
flight, hotel, and restaurant confirmations).

[https://developers.google.com/schemas/search/answers](https://developers.google.com/schemas/search/answers)

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bjt2n3904
Mmmnnn. Not sure if want. My inbox is cluttered enough already.

Can see this getting abused by spammers and advertisers. I start getting
"Pampered Chef invites" popping up all over my calendar.

~~~
burkaman
You have to be an approved sender to use this. I think if enough people report
your emails as spam you automatically lose access to these features.

------
jeena
> Answers in Search

It will be fun to see private emails poping up in the search when someone is
sitting there with you while you do your search who should not have access to
those emails.

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arenaninja
Please no. I just started using ProtonMail and plan to lower my usage of
gmail... I don't want other clients held to an arbitrary standard of email

~~~
matt4077
ProtonMail may not be the best choice if you're a stickler for standards.
Their service unapologetically works only within ProtonMail. Send an e-mail to
someone with a different provider and they get a link to a https view of the
email.

~~~
arenaninja
Thanks, though I set it up yesterday mostly for receiving, I don't plan to
send anything from it

Is there another email provider that isn't hotmail, gmail or yahoo mail with
good prospects at the moment?

~~~
softawre
[https://www.fastmail.com/](https://www.fastmail.com/)

~~~
SippinLean
A good free one?

~~~
NeutronBoy
If you rely on email, it's worth paying for.

I'm a paying Fastmail customer, and it's worth every cent.

~~~
josho
I'm paying as well for my personal account.

But, I am having a hard time justifying switching my entire family over. A
family of 4 is $20/mth, that's 25% of the cost of my internet connection and
seems rather steep.

------
math0ne
ugh, leave email alone!

~~~
jimktrains2
What's your specific complaint? This is about the markup in an html email, it
actually has very little to do with "email" proper.

Moreover, other providers are free to support this markup as well.

------
mtgx
Oh sure, this it can work on, but a proprietary/non-federated E2E encrypted
mechanism for Gmail emails alone is out of the question.

------
agumonkey
Took a peak, saw <script> tag, left.

~~~
hota_mazi
Please don't steal mountains.

~~~
agumonkey
Only twins sets.

------
nebulous1
What the fuck is this page? Stop giving me an abstract and just tell me what's
changed, if anything.

