
Google launches AMP for email - napolux
https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/26/google-makes-emails-more-dynamic-with-amp-for-email/
======
ocdtrekkie
We couldn't stop it. :|

Back when it was announced, several people brought concerns up with the
supposedly open AMP project, and they were closed or locked, and the head of
AMP blocked us. During that time, we found out that while AMP was supposedly
"open", Google teams such as Gmail and Search would implement it however they
wanted, and that no open governance would impact them at all. In essence, the
idea that it was open was only so far as Google would also like you to
implement whatever Google was already doing.

~~~
jasti
The spec has support from Outlook, Yahoo and others:
[https://blog.amp.dev/2019/03/26/building-the-future-of-
email...](https://blog.amp.dev/2019/03/26/building-the-future-of-email-with-
amp/)

~~~
hw
The future of email should be a deprecation of email. Email is an archaic
system, where different clients implement their own versions of rendering or
sanitizing email. Some platforms don't even include proper email headers. Now
there's this 'AMP' that's being shoved up our throats. Not to mention the
nuances around deliverability like spf records and dkim. There's also the
issue of spam.

I'd love to see email go away and more modern messaging platforms take its
place. Having worked on apps and platforms that work with and parse email,
email is not the future.

~~~
gumby
> Email is an archaic system, where different clients implement their own
> versions of rendering

As opposed to web browsers which all perform identically?

~~~
endgame
Nah mate, the web's fine now because everything's Chrome or a reskin of
Chromium.

/s

------
minimaul
At this point, I’m convinced google are actively harmful to the internet.

Trying to centralise as much of the internet and how people interact with it
under their control is dangerous and open to widespread abuse - and this is
already happening.

See:

YouTube demonetisation

YouTube content ID abuse

Chrome extension changes

Gmail is already completely broken on IMAP unless clients throw in google
specific workarounds, and now they’re moving on to break the next layer of
email too.

Joy.

~~~
googleanalytics
ReCAPTCHA is especially brutal if you aren't logged in to Google and are using
Firefox. They make you do challenge after challenge after challenge and s-l-o-
w-l-y fade in pictures as extra punishment. I've stopped using some sites
because of it.

~~~
camone
This is not necessarily Firefox, but because reCAPTCHA is designed to be more
frictionless if Google can identify the user.

If you have their tracking cookies, if you don't use a VPN, and if you block
ads (which would have more tracking cookies), Google's certainty of who you
are is higher, increasing the chance that you are a human.

Firefox's default settings, especially with the new Content Blocking features,
are enough for reCAPTCHA to be less sure you're a human, and try to make you
prove it more often.

So Google manages to sell a product (reCAPTCHA), show good intentions (bot-
prevention), increase usage of Chrome (because it's a smoother experience
through reCAPTCHA), and get more information on everyone.

Win x4

~~~
eridius
Google seems to have intentionally tuned reCAPTCHA to punish anyone who isn't
a Google customer or is blocking Google's tracking cookies. This is a win for
nobody except Google.

------
cproctor
I started transitioning away from Gmail (to Fastmail) last fall, forwarding my
gmail and using a signature asking people to update their address book. This
is a good day to make the hard cutoff.

One strategy for explaining the problem to non-technical people is by
comparing regular email to the walled-garden email used by some banks, phone
companies, and the like--where you have to log into their website to see your
'inbox' and use a web form to send messages. It's super annoying and the other
party has complete control of the communication channel.

"Dynamic email" could be implemented to inject this kludge into your email
client, giving the AMP sender (who likely has more power than the user) the
same level of control over the channel. Imagine opening your email client and
finding a message which asks for two security questions and a captcha, then
lands you in a messaging interface which limits you to 200 characters and
denies basic affordances of email like archiving and forwarding.

I find the arguments that email is already mutable because images are
externally-loaded unpersuasive. In 2013 Google started caching images in gmail
"to protect you from unknown senders who might try to use images to compromise
the security of your computer." [1] Email marketers were upset at losing
engagement metrics. Now a practice that used to be considered abuse is being
rolled out as a feature.

[1] [https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/12/images-now-
showing.html](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.html)

~~~
yogthos
Did the same thing a few weeks ago. The original reasons were that gmail was
incredibly slow in FF, and I wasn't really comfortable with Google reading my
mail.

People point out that the email is read by an automated system, but that
doesn't change the fact that Google is building a profile of me and selling it
to advertisers.

With Fastmail there's a business model I can understand. I pay them money and
they provide me a service.

The really dark side of all this is that we're quickly moving towards a world
where you only get privacy if you can afford it.

~~~
kmlx
>> I wasn't really comfortable with Google reading my mail.

Neither G Suite Gmail nor regular Gmail have been used and/or scanned for ads
personalisation since back in 2017:
[https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-
in...](https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-
enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/)

~~~
yogthos
Even if they stopped using the data for ad personalisation, they're obviously
still scanning it. The new auto reply suggestions feature relies on that.
While they might not be using that data for anything nefarious at the moment,
there's nothing stopping them from changing their mind in the future.

Personally, I just feel more comfortable paying 4 bucks a month to a company
that isn't trying to monetize me.

~~~
kmlx
correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't every email service scan emails? be it
for spam, security, viruses. they have to scan them. i thought this is
standard industry practice.

~~~
yogthos
Typically, that's based on the email metadata such as the sender address, or
mime types of the attachments as opposed to the actual content of the email.

~~~
joshuamorton
I think that's only correct as of like 1995.

Even simple tools like spam assassin read the body, and you can bet that
almost any public provider is doing more than spam assassin.

~~~
hn23
But they do not sell it or analyze it for advertising...

~~~
joshuamorton
Neither does Google.

~~~
hn23
So you think Google gives it for free? Thought it is common sense: If you are
not paying for it, you are the product.

~~~
joshuamorton
There are ads on Gmail. They just aren't based on emails.

Not to mention all kinds of actually free services. Think colab.

------
atonse
I have hated AMP for the web with a passion. The other day I did a google
search, started reading an article, and all of a sudden, I saw a little
floating alert at the bottom saying "signed in to google" and I was quite
alarmed by it, as I hadn't realized I had clicked on an AMP link. So an
article that had nothing to do with google, kept me on a google property, and
caused me to log in to google. So now I'm associated with that article.

These companies desperately need to be chopped up and have severe data sharing
restrictions put on them. They're much more invasive than Microsoft ever was
in the 90s.

~~~
benmarks
Would you not be "associated with that article" regardless? You clicked the
link, and that action is a tracked conversion regardless of destination.

~~~
Marsymars
I don't want my link-clicking actions to be tracked.

~~~
brian_cloutier
That's going to be very hard to fix.

In order for your link-click to be resolved your computer has to send some
packets and tell _somebody_ that you want a piece of content. _Somebody_ has
to give you that content. Unless you're using tor (really, even if you're
using tor), these are actions with physical manifestations which can be
tracked.

~~~
Marsymars
Right, I mean, I'm fine with Example co knowing that I opened
example.com/somepage. I don't want a search engine to know whether I navigated
there from a search result, and I don't want Example co to know where I
navigated from or whether I typed the URL manually into my browser.

------
dkhenry
A few months ago when I moved I set up my network to DNS blackhole known
Tracker's and Ad serving sites. Since then I have gotten more complaints about
people not being able to use email since it turns out almost every email I get
today is laced with tracking of some sort. I do not want any more smarts in my
emails, I just want text that gets sent back and forth. I know this article
claims this will help "Get things done", but I feel it will just be used to
track and sell things to me even more then people currently try to.

~~~
crazygringo
What's the technical explanation for that? I don't understand how that would
prevent e-mail from being "used".

Presumably people aren't sending e-mails to domains that belong to
trackers/ads? Otherwise I don't see what the problem would be.

~~~
acdha
Look at the URLs in emails from big companies. A ton of them go through a
click-tracker first so if the tracker fails you can't follow the link.

~~~
dkhenry
Its not even big companies any more. All the tools that help people send out
group emails ( so things like invites to dinner parties, or birthday parties,
or sign up lists for school snack duty )

~~~
acdha
Big companies wasn’t the right term: I would class what you mentioned in the
same bucket I had in mind, which was more like “places which use marketing
tools” – the local parents group might not build their own system but they’re
pretty likely to be using one because the cost is low and everyone wants to
have statistics.

------
brian_cloutier
As best I can tell there's no way for individuals to send amp emails. In order
for gmail to accept an amp email it's sender must first register [1].
Registration comes with a couple requirements, one of which is a "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."

This is so contrary to how anything else on the web works that I feel I must
have missed something. Their "standard" is not available to individual
developers. Only those who are already sending lots of mail may play. This is
far worse than how web sites have slowly become more opaque so that it's now
harder to learn how to develop them. It's simply not possible to play around
with this new medium.

The open web is no more.

[1]:
[https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail/register](https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail/register)

~~~
JohnFen
> As best I can tell there's no way for individuals to send amp emails

I researched this a bit. Here's the scoop: right now, GMail is trialling AMP
emails and are limiting that trial to entities that send out lots of emails.
Post-trial, the intention is to allow anyone to send AMP emails.

However, other major email services that have hopped onto this bandwagon are
not limiting the use of AMP emails this way.

So it's not true that there's no way for individuals to send AMP emails. It's
true for GMail specifically, but even there, that's a temporary limitation.

~~~
brian_cloutier
nice, thanks for doing this research! Do you have anything I could read which
says they'll open this up?

~~~
JohnFen
Yes. The limitation to the use by major email senders is during the developer
preview. According to this, Google plans to end the preview and release to the
general public this fall: [https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/bringing-
power-amp-...](https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/bringing-power-amp-
gmail/)

------
altmind
I hope nobody will be mislead of the reasons google released AMP and AMP for
email. It have nothing to do with performance(for AMP) or
interactivity(amp4email) and more with establishing a vendor wallgarden.

The standard is "open like in openxml" \- there's a technical commitee, but
your input will not be heard.

~~~
fstanis
> there's a technical commitee, but your input will not be heard.

What makes you think input won't be heard?

~~~
kevingadd
When have your web people ever listened to input? Not Web Audio, not
'autoplay' banning, not AMP, not NPAPI, that's for sure. I was on the Chrome
team and your leadership still told me to pound sand. Your leadership deserve
nothing but contempt.

------
jraph
It probably enables nice use cases but I hope it does not spread too much.

Major features an email have:

\- it does not change (except for external resources, which are blocked by
default anyway),

\- works offline,

\- can be read in ten years just fine.

I want my mails to remain static and available and I don't think I'm okay with
them running some uncontrolled code.

------
altmind
There may be some technical grievances with the standard too.

[https://postmaster.mail.ru/amp/playground.html](https://postmaster.mail.ru/amp/playground.html)

How they forget there's <style media="..."> and came up with this html non-
conformant markup?

`<style amp4email-boilerplate>body{visibility:hidden}</style>`

New templating standard directly in html? They decided not to use DOM or
components but just text, damaging the ability to transform the page in
runtime and requiring backend processing?

` {{#cart_items}} {{/cart_items}}

{{^cart_items}} {{/cart_items}} `

And amp4email starts with `<html 4email>`, with the emoji? seriously? [I
cannot even insert this emoji here at HN]

And regarding the tools... AMP-viewer... Can you actually check if there is
anything implemented? i'm perplexed with [https://github.com/ampproject/amp-
viewer/tree/master/mobile-...](https://github.com/ampproject/amp-
viewer/tree/master/mobile-web) \- its only 4 source files with no logic
inside, last commit 6 months ago... and all its supposedly do is generate
iframe with mangled url pointing to amp-project website "[https://www-
ampproject-org.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.amppro...](https://www-ampproject-
org.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.ampproject.org/?amp_js_v=0.1#origin=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A8000")
? So all the AMP processing is walled out in a propietary service?

And the other amp-viewer mentioned at
[https://www.ampproject.org/docs/integration/integrate-
amphtm...](https://www.ampproject.org/docs/integration/integrate-amphtml-
email) redirects to google corp portal?

[https://g3doc.corp.google.com/java/com/google/gws/plugins/am...](https://g3doc.corp.google.com/java/com/google/gws/plugins/amp/g3doc/index.md?cl=head)

~~~
duskwuff
> And amp4email starts with `<html 4email>`, with the emoji? seriously? [I
> cannot even insert this emoji here at HN]

I think I know why they're doing this, actually. It's a clever way of ensuring
that any services that send, receive, or interact with AMP mail are Unicode-
safe. If they can't include a U+26A1 ("HIGH VOLTAGE SIGN") character in the
AMP markup, they'll probably mangle any other non-Latin text too.

~~~
IanCal
It was brought up a long time ago that it was not valid HTML around the
earlier days of the AMP project -
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/472](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/472)

It was kept in because it is fun, apparently.

------
rubyn00bie
This feels like a gigantic separation of concerns violation. Why the hell
should amp have anything to do with email? What are the advantages over just
normal markup besides proprietary features each vendor shovels on-top of the
"open" standard?

... _sigh_ AMP is the one thing I really, really, despise from Google and it
just continues to spread.

~~~
fixermark
It looks like they're leveraging the safety aspect of AMP here. IIUC, the
subset of HTML behavior AMP enables is generally considered to be "safe." If
that property can hold, AMP-enabled email can allow for the benefits of live
HTML in the client without the drawbacks of the surprises that can occur from
arbitrary HTML execution.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Does AMP not allow JavaScript?

~~~
fixermark
AMP gates the JavaScript it allows and requires asynchronous evaluation. 3rd
party JS is also allowed, but it has to be in a sandboxed iframe which, in a
browser at least, would guard some of the user's state from exfiltration
attacks (it's unclear to me if the iframe feature is available in email AMP).

[https://www.ampproject.org/learn/about-
how/](https://www.ampproject.org/learn/about-how/)

~~~
fstanis
Emails only support a subset of AMP, so iframes and any form of JavaScript
(other than the whitelisted AMP components) are not allowed.

------
CalRobert
Pretty classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I expect nothing will render right
in Thunderbird pretty soon.

~~~
bitpush
emails are packages with different representations in it. You have the classic
"plantext" version and "html" version in emails today. What this is doing is
adding another one to it.

Mutt, for instance, discards "html" and renders just the "plaintext" version.
AMP emails would just be another part of the same email. Nothing would stop
working.

~~~
PaulHoule
Yeah, but messing with email is scary. Email is still an open platform and if
Google gets complete control of it then there is no open platform that people
actually use.

~~~
cramforce
AMP including AMP for email is governed by a multi-company Technical Steering
Committee as well as Advisory Committee since last year.
[https://blog.amp.dev/2019/03/06/encouraging-more-voices-
in-a...](https://blog.amp.dev/2019/03/06/encouraging-more-voices-in-amp/)

AMP for email has support by Outlook, Yahoo, and Mail.ru, so it very much
isn't under Google's control.

~~~
dashundchen
Looking at their technical steering committee, 3 out of 7 members are from
Google, with only one from a company of what I would consider equivalent pull
(Microsoft).

[https://github.com/ampproject/meta-tsc](https://github.com/ampproject/meta-
tsc)

I would hardly consider Yahoo to be a leader in anything at this point, not
sure about mail.ru. From an outsider's perspective AMP looks Google
controlled.

It looks like from your comment history you are part of Google's AMP team. It
would be nice to disclose that.

~~~
cramforce
Yahoo is a BIG email client.

The TSC requires majority consensus. Google does not have a majority.

~~~
dragonwriter
Google’s three plus any one other member does, though.

~~~
cramforce
Yes, but you know, that isn't Google controlling it and these are all member
from major internet companies that won't take part in such a "conspiracy".

~~~
AaronFriel
Why does Google have three members then?

~~~
cramforce
Because we do the majority of the work. The governance body size will,
however, expand with further non-Google members. So, the hypothetical "you
just have to convince only one" is becoming less of an issue over time.

~~~
X-Istence
^ cramforce works for Google on AMP.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
Of course it's always the benevolent Google ramming down their network down
our throats. How would AMP bans work? You can't even read any email in any
client?

------
tobr
There’s a simple thing Google could do to convince me that their intentions
with AMP are honorable: make it possible to turn it off.

EDIT, to be clear: for Google search results.

~~~
JoeSmithson
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something but how can a standard be turned on and
off? Can't you just not implement it? Or do you mean Google Search shouldn't
show AMP pages?

~~~
MithrilTuxedo
When I swipe right on my Pixel 2 to get to the Google Now news feed, any
article I click on opens the AMP version.

It's great when I'm on the light rail going through areas with patchy cell
signal, but when an article's share buttons are broken because it's the AMP
version it's a pain to figure out how to navigate to the non-AMP version of
the article.

A couple news sources (usually technical ones) thankfully put a link to the
non-AMP version somewhere on the page, but IMHO this should be automatically
done for every AMP link opened.

~~~
microcolonel
> _A couple news sources (usually technical ones) thankfully put a link to the
> non-AMP version somewhere on the page, but IMHO this should be automatically
> done for every AMP link opened._

That is available in the standard markup, so it should maybe just be added to
the UI (in the ellipsis menu probably).

------
ilikehurdles
Great! Now I get the web interface I thoroughly despise viewing on my phone
browser delivered directly to my mail client!

Puke.

I have been strongly considering migrating off of G Suite for my domains,
files, and emails. Maybe it’s time I bite the bullet rather than keep using a
product I have to actively fight to use.

~~~
14
I too have considered leaving gmail for good. It seems like a bit of a process
which I don't really know how to go about it and where to turn to but would
love to do.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
First and foremost, I recommend everyone own their email address. That means
getting a domain name. I switched from using a gmail.com address to an address
at my own domain (I use inbox at mydomainname.com as my main address) over a
period of about a year and a half, where my new email address was forwarded to
Gmail, but I regularly updated various accounts to use my new address.

Then, when I changed the redirect to point to a new service (FastMail), most
of my email came with immediately. There's some secondary advantages to this.
Not only can you switch providers at the drop of a hat, but you can control
your address even if you get banned or blocked by the email provider.

If you have, say, a gmail.com address, and your Gmail account gets terminated,
you may lose access to all of your other accounts across the Internet as well,
since you won't be able to access the email they're connected to. But if you
own the domain, and it's forwarded to gmail.com, you can redirect the domain
to another email provider, and send a new reset email to regain access to your
other accounts.

~~~
systemspeed
This seems like a really good idea. Do you have any suggestions for a hosted
email client similar to Gmail as well?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
As I said above, I'm pretty taken with FastMail. It's got an incredibly zippy
web client, which I value a lot. Besides the privacy aspect, they just have a
better product.

------
begriffs
> The promise of AMP for Email is that it’ll turn basic messages into a
> surface for actually getting things done.

Oh god no, please don't turn email into a "surface."

> That means you’ll be able to do [x, y, z] right from the message, all
> without leaving your web-based email client.

Quit. Gmail.

Why are so many technical users still on this gross platform that is turning
the earliest, most successful decentralized internet protocol into a walled
surveillance advertiser garden?

If you use gmail, go register a domain and point your MX records at an honest
mail provider like Fastmail, Posteo, or Kolabnow. Or run your own mail server.
This way your mail provider is hidden behind your domain and you can change it
in the future if desired.

Seriously, stop reading hacker news for a second and make today the day you
start migrating away from Google.

~~~
auslander
> If you use gmail, go register a domain and point your MX

Simpler. Use outlook.com or icloud.com or tens of other email providers that
are not an advertising company.

------
ProAm
Google tries really hard to get me to leave. Gmail is already unusable on the
web. Google Calendar now has background images to events I cant turn off. GCM
doesnt notify me when I get emails on android unless I wake the phone. I
really dont want to go to Apple but what's keeping me using anything Google
beyond search?

~~~
asark
> Gmail is already unusable on the web.

The Basic HTML version is the best and snappiest version, by far. Still
exists. Even on Google's own Fiber service I have plenty of time when trying
to load any other version to click the "slow? try basic HTML" link in the
bottom right, and then you can set it as your default.

I'll be leaving anyway with this Amp crap, but there's still work email. Basic
HTML is the way to go.

------
jwr
If you use Google's E-mail service (directly or through Google Apps), you no
longer own your E-mail. It is the property of an advertising company that will
do with it whatever it sees fit, including reading it, learning from it,
modifying it and hiding some of it from you.

This needs to be explained to people, as most still think that Gmail just
displays all of your private E-mail with a nice interface, FOR FREE!

The "FOR FREE" part is really the killer, I found that people are amazingly
resistant to the idea of paying anything for E-mail, even if compared to their
other utilities (power, water, internet, TV?) it is extremely cheap.

~~~
fstanis
Ads in Gmail are not related to your emails:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603)

~~~
rurp
At the moment they aren't, but they used to be and very well could be again in
the future. Also, that link says nothing about Google not "reading it,
learning from it, modifying it and hiding some of it from you", when it comes
to your emails, which is GPs stated concern.

Google still saves and parses every email it gets and likely uses that data
for a number of purposes. No longer directly targeting Gmail ads with it
really doesn't do much for people who are concerned about Google and privacy
issues.

~~~
joshuamorton
>Google still saves and parses every email it gets and likely uses that data
for a number of purposes.

Sure, but so does literally every email provider. Storing your email and spam
classification are pretty much the two biggest features an email provider can
provide.

This is like objections to "algorithms" or "chemicals".

------
megous
What was so bad about just following links from an e-mail to a website? Looks
like this will be quite a boon to scammers. I wonder what creative uses
they'll come up with.

There are some ingrained expectations in people when it comes to e-mail that
will now be violated, so there's a great opportunity to abuse this.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
As difficult as it's been to get people to look for the correct URL in the
address bar of a browser, a good number of people are (relatively) aware of
basic steps to ensure they are not being phished. Not clicking on links in
emails, and going to the sites directly is a common strategy.

By default, most email clients hide the header information needed to determine
whether or not an email came from the address it claims to, including Gmail. I
suspect we're going to see a lot of phishing emails that ask you to input
sensitive data right into your email.

------
jacquesm
The last thing I need is for my email to become more like the web. I want my
email to become even _less_ like the web.

------
umvi
Email needs to be even simpler than it currently is, not more complex.

These AMP emails sound like a they are going to be a huge headache. "RSVP
straight from the email!!" Yeah, and when that doesn't work am I stuck?

~~~
andrei_says_
Yes, RSVP directly from the email I forwarded you :)

------
samcday
Oh boy, can’t wait to see how this fractures the email landscape when Google
inevitably abandons it 3-5 years from now. </snark>

~~~
JohnFen
AMP email itself will fracture the email landscape anyway.

------
mastazi
“email has largely stayed the same with static messages that eventually go out
of date”

It’s amazing how reality is completely the opposite of what they are saying. I
can still read a text email sent in 1999. No way an interactive AMP email will
still work in 20 years.

------
wazoox
I'll still use only plain-text, GPG-signed email.

------
Fice
Email is the last massively used open and independent communication system on
the Internet. Unfortunately, many irresponsible users allowed Google to
monopolize it by flocking to Gmail, and now Google is taking advantage of
their position.

------
thsowers
The last thing I need in Google's already unusable web interface is a "more
dynamic" experience. Ever since the Gmail "update", it regularly takes me 45+
seconds on a 60MBps connection to just _load_ my inbox.

~~~
qnsi
I wonder why this happens? Both gmail and Google drive loads so slow for me.
They cant make this right?

~~~
favadi
I don't know why, but Gmail and Google Drive loads significantly faster on
Chrome compare to Firefox.

------
felixfbecker
Can anyone explain to me why HTML inside email is not working for these use
cases, and why we need a new standard if HTML powers these things on the web?

~~~
mrcarruthers
Because HTML in emails is a notoriously painful process to get working even
remotely well.

Not all email providers support HTML in the same way. Some examples:

* At one point Gmail did not support style tags and all styles had to be inline. * Outlook for years used the Word HTML processor which had all sorts of limitations. Hell to get a button you had to create it in VML and put a conditional "if Microsoft do this" on it. * Some (up until a few years ago) versions of Outlook ignore either padding/margin on CSS (forget which one) * In order to layout your email so that it works across all clients, forget about using anything remotely modern. You have to use tables everywhere like it's 2000 all over again.

I'm probably forgetting a bunch, it's been a couple years since I had to deal
with it.

With all these issues, adding yet another thing onto it is just asking for
pain.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
>Not all email providers support HTML in the same way.

Excellent. Let's introduce one more standard.

~~~
kkarakk
yes BUT like it or not this standard has the backing of the defacto ruler of
the consumer email space - gmail.

------
driverdan
Do any of the providers that support this atrocity have a setting to turn it
off?

------
Pamar
Haven't read the full article yet, but I'd like to note that ~20 years ago a
now-defunct company tried to put to market something similar. The product name
was, IMS, "Zaplets": the idea was to have html mails with Java applets
embedded, so you could for example send an email with a "poll Zaplet" that
would work more or less like a Doodle poll - restricted to the email
receivers. And if you were one of them, you could periodically open the
original email again and see the dynamic zaplet content with all the changes
that had been applied in the meantime.

(I used these a bit to coordinate small stuff in a project I was working on,
mostly for the novelty value).

The company was soon acquired by some other bigger company, and the Zaplet
concept was shelved for good.

See: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-new-kind-of-
email/](https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-new-kind-of-email/)

------
hrktb
The actual announcement:

[https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/03/dynamic-
email-i...](https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/03/dynamic-email-in-
gmail-beta.html)

------
Havoc
Ah the latest totally definitely not evil move.

------
warp
I'd be more supportive of this if it standardized (and mandated) unsubscribe
links.

Email would be less of a hassle if I could just unsubscribe from many things
in a standardized way within the email client itself.

~~~
jimktrains2
That already exists: `List-Unsubscribe` since 1998,RFC 2369.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Making it mandatory would help.

------
knowsmorsecode
Let this fail like google+ is all I have to say.

~~~
ldng
Make it fail. I'm going to flag as SPAM any mail that comes with AMP in it.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
Until google bans your account and everything holy related to it for "click
fraud"

~~~
justtopost
Ill take that risk.

------
rocky1138
Looking into switching to Fastmail. Google hasn't been friendly for years and
it's finally time.

Before I pull the trigger, anyone have a better service than Fastmail to
recommend?

~~~
smush
No it pretty much just works.

------
cramforce
One important clarification since the question comes up often. AMP for email
doesn't make emails inherently mutable.

Emails already support updating by including external image references inside
the email. Allowing this is a choice of the client.

AMP for email makes JSON requests proxied by the email client. Your client can
decide to only make these requests once and then keep them stable or to show
you a version history of the state of your email upon every time you opened
it.

~~~
pfortuny
What? My email client has to connect according to what a message says?

That is crazy, man.

NB: Not blaming you, just shocked.

~~~
cramforce
Nah, it would typically include all info known at send time, but it can see if
there is updated data on email open time.

E.g. when you open a notification email from GitHub, the email can tell you
that since it was sent, there are now additional comments to consider.

~~~
pfortuny
Ok, but a sufficiently bad constructed message woul force me to do something
to retrieve interesting “actual” content? That is what seems wrong.

~~~
cramforce
That email would probably otherwise just contain a link. It really doesn't
make a difference.

Clients can (and do) use trust scoring to activate AMP in emails. Right now
they use the same model that would allow loading images by default.

------
Urgo
So.. google wave is back?

AMP: [https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Dynamic-
Ma...](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Dynamic-
Mail_Docs.gif)

Wave:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzuuWZPaXc&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzuuWZPaXc&feature=youtu.be&t=25)

------
supernintendo
Getting a template to render probably across all clients (assuming you’re
working with more than just text) is already a rat king of client
implementations, HTML specs etc. Some versions of Outlook, for example, use
the MS Word rendering engine which forces you to rely on a pattern of inline
comment conditionals to even get markup and styling to not break the entire
message. Mobile email clients add another dimension of concerns. Worst of all,
you can’t undo or fix emails that are already in the wild so the consequence
of errors can sometimes be catastrophic (broken unsub links, incorrect ESP
merge variables, etc.)

That said, the problem is not email. Email is just fine. The problem is people
using email to solve problems that email was not designed to solve, namely
marketing. With this move, Google is adding a considerable amount of fuel to
the fire. Can’t say that I’m a fan of this, as cool as the features may sound
on a surface level.

------
gojomo
Anyone remember FireDrop/Zaplets?

[https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2000/0612/6514218a.html#58b1f3...](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2000/0612/6514218a.html#58b1f30c57dc)

Interactive emails, powered by HTML/Javascript, in 2000! What could possibly
go wrong?

------
Rebelgecko
I'm assuming that Google killed the Inbox app died because they didn't want to
implement this? Ugh.

------
thybag
I'm always disappointed there is no standard for just sending markdown emails.
They work fine as plain text, are future proof & any can easily be styled up
an email client to fit with the rest of its design.

Always a shame to have to go full HTML email, just for some light formatting.

------
josteink
Google’s hostile attempt at taking over internet email is finally here.

There can be no doubt what they want now, and that Gmail as a platform is
harmful to the internet at large.

If you haven’t already, migrate today. There’s plenty of good options out
there.

------
chuckgreenman
Being able to respond to a doodle pool directly from an email is awesome! But
the number of those use cases will be dwarfed by marketing companies that
abuse these feature to track people even more.

------
bitpush
Dont know about others, but that demo of making comments on Google Docs sold
it for me. Time and again, I click on email notifications just to respond to
comments. This makes it very convenient.

------
zimmund
This reminds me a lot of Google Wave. While I have my concerns about a format
brought by Google (who may be defining a bit too much of the web these days),
adding richness to emails will be refreshing. As long as we keep the idea that
a message is something that will not change and be accessible as long as we
can access our inbox, I'm all in for improvements. I just hope it evolves into
something beyond Google's control.

------
llbowers
Maybe I'm just in the HN bubble, but it seems AMP is pretty unpopular. I've
found numerous requests online asking how to disable it from others, though
again, only anecdotal.

Is it unpopular? Or are most users ambivalent? And if it is unpopular why does
Google continually try and push it?

Edit: grammatical mistakes

~~~
kkarakk
most users only care about speed, amp gives them that speed. voila, they keep
using google - "coz it's fast".

------
jasonhansel
I've switched to Fastmail and DuckDuckGo away from Google services. Definitely
the right choice.

------
riffraff
I'll predict it here first: European Commission will be fining google about
this in 10 years.

------
CodeSheikh
AMP for email is indeed a terrible idea. Google made Gmail extremely slow with
latest facelift. The only reason I can see if for Google et al to show ads
(impressions vs clicks).

------
kerng
Does anyone really need this? Email is already a prime security threat and
attack angle- now you can get phished from within the mail app. Awesome!

------
rad_gruchalski
Wow, I’m already looking forward to more flashy, blinking, nagging,
unsolicited spam from booking.com in my mailbox. Thanks Google!

------
newnewpdro
If you work for an Alphabet company please quit.

------
Alex3917
Which AMP components are actually supported? The spec isn't rendering
correctly and none of the links seem to work.

~~~
fstanis
The full list of supported AMP components is here:
[https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-
tutorials/learn/amp...](https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-
tutorials/learn/amp-email-format.html?format=email)

------
alkonaut
So presumably I can assume any email using amp is a campaign and just move it
straight out of my inbox?

------
suddenexample
Hmmmm. As long as this is restricted to very simple functionality, it seems
fine to me. What I don't want is my emails taking 3 seconds to load because
some random AMP component I don't need has to load. Also I think they are
aware about the static permanence issue... Hope they have a good solution to
that.

------
DeepYogurt
If you're using gmail personally it's time to up sticks.

------
runxel
Maybe I got old already, but this looks like a horrible idea.

------
deepnotderp
Whelp, time to finally migrate to Startmail or Protonmail...

------
desireco42
Email should be plain text, anything else is overkill. :)

------
paulcarroty
Google trying to present whole internet as part of their services: Chrome
browser as gateway, then search (which also aggressive promote Chrome) and
Youtube/Blogger/Maps/News/etc.

------
tschellenbach
well say goodbye to the idea of email being a distributed protocol.
centralization for the win

------
openbasic
OK, that's it. I'm not paying for this crap anymore. Which email providers do
you guys recommend? Zoho? Rackspace?

~~~
eafkuor
Runbox is great, although I'm not an email power user.

------
mgarfias
this sounds like consilient from the dotcom daze. wow that was a long ass time
ago.

------
kevin_thibedeau
What prevents a sender from changing the content of an email? If none, the
legal ramifications would be scary.

------
t0astbread
Someone should start a movement for open-standards compliant interactive email
using CSS hacks

~~~
nfoz
I'd rather we just don't have "interactive email".

~~~
t0astbread
Google's gonna jump on it no matter if we like it or not. And if Google jumps
on it and succeeds to make it popular all businesses will jump on it. And
before you know it, Google owns HTML email (which will then be all AMP).

I understand your concerns but think about it: In 5 years time would you
rather have emails that are as broken as today's web pages or emails that are
as broken as today's web pages AND controlled by Google?

------
SimeVidas
ELI5 Why is this bad?

------
stratigos
> ...get their work done faster

precisely :)

work! work! work! work! work! work...

------
JohnFen
God help us all.

~~~
halfjoking
Jesus Christ, it's Google's AMP!

AMP is the Jason Bourne of the web developer world... it could be the end of
us all.

------
Zenst
I find the level of hate for AMP to be about on par with the hate for Comic
Sans circa 2005.

It's at the stage that you meet people who love to hate it without even
knowing why that hate it, that it is almost fashionable to hate it. Then those
that do have a reason to hate it, always have their own reason. With no
consensus reason for hating it. Though I'm noticing an increase of "Google"
being the reason they give.

But then people love to hate, back when IBM was top dog - people loved to hate
them, then Microsoft, and today, well today Google seems to get more hate than
Microsoft these days. That's not saying Google did anything wrong, or
Microsoft did anything right. If anything, people love to hate whoever is
sitting at the top and today in the public's eye - that's Google. Not saying
they are right, or wrong.

But clearly - the people's level of hate does seem to correlate with any large
company attaining a overly dominant position. Just kinda fascinating to see
the same patterns play out over time.

~~~
JohnFen
> It's at the stage that you meet people who love to hate it without even
> knowing why that hate it

I don't love to hate it. I just hate it, and I can tell you why -- it's a one-
two punch of AMP pages being generally inferior to the real pages, and Google
interposing itself between me and the website.

~~~
Zenst
I think you've nailed it - people hate having choices removed from them.

------
auslander
I don't think subj will be adopted for normal correspondence. It will be used
only for marketing emails. I will not be spending time encoding AMP to write
to somebody.

------
auslander
What the Inventor Of Email Has to say about this? I hope he'll sue Google, let
him know. [https://vashiva.com](https://vashiva.com)

------
jesusthatsgreat
Ok gang, let's see who's behind this...

 _takes off the mask to reveal Google Buzz_

------
m3kw9
Google is really purposefully trying to piss people off

------
verytrivial
I have a well developed curmudgeonly streak I confess, but the first AMP email
I receive from any person or organisation will be the last I open from them.

------
s17n
Email is actively dying and being replaced by closed alternatives (Messenger,
Slack, etc) and any effort by any company to keep it alive should be
applauded, including this one.

That being said I can't imagine a scenario where AMP in email is anything but
annoying.

~~~
paganel
I still can find emails in my mailbox that I've sent or received 10 or 15
years ago while on the other hand I have pretty big issues with finding the
exact message I sent on FB Messenger only a day ago (it involves lots of
scrolling), never mind a couple of years (Skype presents the the same issue
for me). I guess Slack behaves the same way as FB Messenger (I haven't
personally used it).

~~~
s17n
Yes, this is why we need to support email. You can list its advantages all day
long but if people don't check their email (or don't even have an email
account), then it will be useless and that's the direction we're headed.

~~~
JohnFen
I don't agree that's the direction we're headed. But if it is, and if
something like AMP is what's needed to "save" it, that result is the same as
it being dead for me, personally.

