Google Launches AMP For Email To Bring Web-like Actionable Content To Gmail (venturebeat.com) 98
Google today announced an extension of the AMP (accelerated mobile pages) program to include another popular communications medium. From a report: The internet giant unveiled the Gmail developer preview of AMP for email, a web-like experience designed to make emails more engaging and interactive. 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. So an email from Pinterest, for example, could contain actionable content, allowing users to Pin content to their own Pinterest account without leaving Gmail. Or they could complete a form to arrange a meeting, fill in a questionnaire, and do just about anything -- all from within the email itself. It's clear that marketers will be a major target audience here.
Maybe it's the decades of viruses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Maybe it's the decades of viruses (Score:5, Funny)
But just think of the advertising and analytics opportunities it gives to Google!
Re: Maybe it's the decades of viruses (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Mr. Smith,
Please log into your internet banking here, as a fraudulent transaction has been detected by our software:
Username:
Password:
Submit
From Russia with love.
NO oooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Another major bandwidth hog and malware assault vector.
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Optimist.
AMP is irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Just stop trying to create technologies that do the same thing as what established standards already do, but in a sillier way.
No. Stop. Don't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Email should be a flat, inert, self-contained message. Links if you need them, but otherwise *stop*
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Yep, that would probably be the final step to get me off gmail.
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Gmail is actually WAY more secure than having your average user run a desktop client, but this is idea will lead to security compromised, guaranteed.
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Re:Security? (Score:5, Informative)
Google saves, complies, and sells the contents of every email. I don't know how email could be *less* secure.
You and your parents post are discussing entirely different subjects, even though they both use similar words.
I believe afidel was referring to the risk to the security of your local computer being greater if using a desktop client versus gmail. That may be debatable, but there are some good supporting facts for that.
You are referring to information security, or the risk of your personal email data being exposed to others.
While you do have a point (google can read all unencrypted emails and provides stats and such to advertisers), I'd still wager that your data is more secure on gmail servers than many other services. There's a wide range of email setups, but they typically fall in the range of: ... and there are mixes in between each of those (ex. you can use gmail and download all mail to local client).
a) admin your own server and leave mail on server
b) use some 3rd party email provider (your ISP, a paid for service, etc), and download mail to read locally with local email client
c) use some webmail provider, like gmail
Which of those provides the most security to the average users data, and to the average users PC? I think the big names in webmail fill that role, from fastmail to outlook.com to gmail. And if you admin your own server, you'd better be damned good at it, and good luck with your spam filter (though obscurity does helps here).
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Google saves, complies, and sells the contents of every email. I don't know how email could be *less* secure.
Google does nothing of the sort. Google doesn't give your email content to anyone; Google's mail servers scan your email and use the content to decide what ads to show you in the Gmail interface. That's it.
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Outlook and Thunderbird don't show pictures by default. The added content just ensures that some spammer knows that a user actually saw their email at the very least. This would be very useful in targeted attacks, where one wants to find what someone's IP is, perhaps to DDoS them.
Of all the things to screw around with, E-mail isn't one of them. We already went through at least two "active content" cycles, one being VB scripts (I Love You worms), and HTML with its Web bugs, beacons, tracking stuff, etc.
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Outlook and Thunderbird don't show remote pictures by default.
FTFY.
Re: Security? (Score:2)
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marketers is a synonym for scammers.
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Scammers are higher in the social order.
Wow, how awful. (Score:1)
I will make sure my email client strips this shit out along with all the images people seem to think belong in email WTF, FAIL!
Not interested. (Score:1)
a web-like experience designed to make emails more engaging and interactive
And the world said as one: fuck that.
Where's the button for plain text only format? (Score:3)
F__K NO!!! (Score:5, Funny)
I know it is only Tuesday, but I am calling this as worst tech idea of the week.
Re:F__K NO!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideas need to be combated aggressively. How it works in the tech world is that if you just sit back passively and say "eh, not for me," then the powers that be will make it default, and more and more companies will use it exclusively. There will be a short period where you really can opt out, but as it gains more traction, you will be more cut off and marginalized like folks who, say, refuse to use sites that require Javascript. The vast majority will always choose something more functional, regardless of security concerns. As long as they don't care, don't expect that just sitting back and doing nothing will keep you safe from this -- especially since the advertisers, the trackers, and general do-badders REALLY want it, and they have a lot of resources to push for it.
HTML email (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't we go through this before with HTML, remote content, scripts and the like in email? That worked out so well, after all.
Re: Early April Fools joke? (Score:2)
Great (Score:1)
So that means that when I open my e-mail I'll get the following:
1. A giant full-screen video ad
a. Or a giant full screen asking me to please turn off my ad blocker
2. Fifty tracking cookies
3. JavaScript to set custom scroll bars
4. Four bit-coin mining ads
5. And finally, a drive by offering to fix all of my computer problems by encrypting my hard drive.
Fuck you, Google.
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6: While that all is going on, an EME-protected cryptocurrency miner running in the background.
Hopefully there will be a toggle (Score:2)
Like quick replies, there are people that will love this and there are the rest of us. It didn't take long for that toggle to appear. Hopefully the collective outcry will make this optional pretty quickly. I don't want my email to be "interaction."
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I don't want my email to be "interaction."
And, email already has that. It's called "Reply".
Great! (Score:2)
Except I never asked for this. And I don't see it having any affect on my life.
Thankfully (Score:3)
I only POP my mail from Gmail -- and read all my mail in text-only mode, except for those occasional ones that only use HTML (frelling sigh). I only actually log into Gmail to empty the trash, and permanently everything, as POP only seems to move downloaded mail there (again, sigh). For me, email contains static information and 99.9% of my email gets read and deleted, I don't need or want to have to go back to review possibly updated dynamic content -- give me a link for any of that and I'll review it in my browser.
The article mentions possible desirable uses for this (below) but in general I give this a *BIG* No Thank You.
“Many people rely on email for information about flights, events, news, purchases, and beyond,” noted Gmail product manager Aakash Sahney. “With AMP for Email, it’s easy for information in email messages to be dynamic, up-to-date, and actionable.
What can go wrong? (Score:2)
Some would say that this violates the "do one thing, do it well" prescription for building quality applications.
That is, until remembering that Google is not a technology company, they are an advertising company. Their revenue base is literally dependent upon how frequently they assault your eyeballs. Everything Google does is to make money off of forcing you to look at stuff.
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Great ....if! (Score:2)
If you're still using GMail... (Score:1)
all I'll need to know is how to block/disable it (Score:5, Insightful)
HTML (Score:2)
I don't want my mail "engaging and interactive." (Score:5, Insightful)
Dumb as a panata (Score:1)
So now I have to keep all email, just in case someone decides to add a tid bit to it? What happens when I delete an email and then some moron decides there was more to say, or to correct some spelling error or what ever? Will I get a new email with the mark ups or is it dead to me since I deleted the original? This seems like an attempt to do something "new" just for the sake of saying you did something at all.
I still use mutt (Score:3)
Will there be enough text left in the body of the email for a text-based client to even work anymore? Not that I'm worried about it - I suspect the same people who will use AMP to send email are the ones I wouldn't want to read anyway.
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Yup. I love mutt's html-dump mode; it shows me all the links (including the 1x1 bitmaps) and lets me pick and choose which ones I want to copy and paste to a real browser. 99% of the time the answer is 'none of them'. I suspect AMP-dump mode will function similarly.
The big problem with HTML email (or AMP) for us mutt-users is the wasted bandwidth when they actually include all those mime-attachments inline, clogging our mbox's with octet-junk.
Hell, no! (Score:2)
Google is eager to stress that this isn’t a purely Google-focused product — the company wants other email client providers to embrace it.
Fuck off, Google. Just fuck off!
AMP (Score:1)
Malware
Present
thanks for at least naming it correctly.
Email tracking/cookies (Score:2)
I'm sure some idiots is salivating at this. The max an email should contain is an attachment. All else should be plain text.
No. Just... No. Good God, No. (Score:2)
Tell me again how Google are the good guys. It just gets both funnier and sadder every time someone tries.
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And I guess I'm still waiting for the answer.
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Two out of your four are "storage got cheaper" which was happening long before Google came around and kept happening. Google might have sped things up a bit by being aggressive, but that's all.
Searching being full of advertising... well, it still is, but thanks to Google 90% of it is hidden beneath the surface. Like an iceberg.
They did Google Docs right.
"Engaging and Interactive" (Score:3)
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\o/ (Score:1)
This will screw up discovery and FOIA big time (Score:3)
OK, let's say you have a court order for discovery, or you're in a government agency that receives a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request for old emails. You may have the original "container" email but the content could easily have changed. How will courts handle this?
Google Wave? (Score:1)