Re: [mailop] Gmail Dynamic Email / Impact on Email Ecosystem

[Brandon Long via mailop]

On Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 4:09 PM Ángel via mailop  wrote:

> On 2022-08-11 at 10:55 +, Gellner, Oliver wrote:
> > In other MUAs they display like normal emails, Id expect that Googles
> > dynamic emails behave the same way.
>
> They seem to be a text/x-amp-html, and require a text/html or
> text/plain fallback, so other clients would simply use the fallback.
> At least the design seems robust, enforcing that this new standard is s
> trictly followed.
>
> Like Tobias, I also found about them really recently. I am not really
> convinced about them so far. Not the way Google implemented them, but
> the underlying concept.
> I understand why an email that is kept up-to-date can be thought to
> make sense in some cases, but a "dynamic email" breaks the concept of
> an email that we have been using for the last fifty years.
>
> An email archive used to be similar to an archived physical letter in
> that it is immutable. You could go back and read the same content you
> viewed a few days ago. With this, you could find it now contains
> something different. Even two people receiving the same email could get
> shown different content.
>
> This was already possible to some extent by using external images, but
> only as a subproduct.
>
> This attempt is a big change on the basics of email, and only time will
> tell us if it changes things radically, or ends up discarded.
>

I think a lot of email consumers these days are confused by the non-static
nature
of email.  They see something new in their inbox and expect that it's
actually "recent"
or "current", when in reality it was sent some time in the past which may
be days or weeks.

In that sense, updating the information in the email to be current has some
utility... even if
most of the cases I can think of may be just as easily be served by say an
"expires" header
or something.

One can imagine a "deal" email that has now expired, or a time limited
password reset email.

The most common one I see (which I assume is amp but maybe is more specific
google internal)
is the email notifications for comment threads in google docs, which show
the latest comments and not
just the individual one.  Frankly, since you get one for each comment, and
then they're updated to all
show the full list, it seems weird, but I can see that it maybe helps
sometimes.

Will dynamic email be useful in the long term or a dead end?  I don't know.

Brandon
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Re: [mailop] Gmail Dynamic Email / Impact on Email Ecosystem

[Ángel via mailop]

On 2022-08-13 at 03:17 +0200, Tobias Fiebig wrote:
> Heho,
> 
> > Brandon Long via mailop
> > https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail is the Google developer 
> > information about dynamic email, that link was about controlling the 
> > content with Google Workspace.
> Thanks for sharing, this has some rather interesting examples. Do I
> need to be specially vetted to send AMP email, or could I--as long as
> it is compliant to the standard--send one myself, i.e., without being
> a registered newsletter sender? The AMP page is somewhat unclear
> there.

You need to be registered with Google to send AMP email to other users
of Google service.[1] But you can configure the receiving account to
enable amp email from a certain sender.[2] In fact,you are expected to
use that for testing.

Regards


1- https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail/register
2- https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail/testing-dynamic-email



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Re: [mailop] Gmail Dynamic Email / Impact on Email Ecosystem

[Tobias Fiebig via mailop]

Heho,

> Brandon Long via mailop
> https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail is the Google developer 
> information about dynamic email, that link was about controlling the 
> content with Google Workspace.
Thanks for sharing, this has some rather interesting examples. Do I need to be 
specially vetted to send AMP email, or could I--as long as it is compliant to 
the standard--send one myself, i.e., without being a registered newsletter 
sender? The AMP page is somewhat unclear there.

> Brandon Long via mailop
> The standardization is via AMP, docs at https://amp.dev/about/email/ 
> and a pretty short list of other providers who support it.
I acknowledge that mail's UX is currently 'fresh and outstanding' and something 
will have to change. Still, change is naturally driven by those who do, 
which--in this case--is the group of organizations around AMP. However, I'd 
argue that changes will be aligned with the needs of these organizations in 
terms of providing consistent services to their customer base under their 
business model [1], which naturally inflicts on how these systems are being 
designed. This also inflicts on the governance of venues for organizing and 
coordinating such changes, as for example AMP, implementing a model that allows 
decision making to follow operational needs [2].  And, to be clear, I am not 
claiming that this is a google-specific thing, or try to pick on google, but 
instead argue that any rational actor with that scale of operations will 
ultimately operate in this way to match its objectives.

> Brandon Long via mailop
> The death of email will come from outside the eco-system, not from 
> individual attempts to extend it.
I wouldn't necessarily call AMP an individual attempt, given the market share 
of some of the involved parties.

Also, I was referring to the death of XMPP. If I remember correctly, XMPP's 
rise and fall actually started with major players [3,4] committing to XMPP 
federation.
However, over time, and with needs, roadmaps, and available features in clients 
diverging more and more, federation was discontinued by Facebook and Google [5].
At this point, the role of others being less sharing and more consuming--Page 
explicitly calling out Microsoft here [6]--certainly should also be mentioned. 
What ultimately broke the neck of XMPP was then its ill suitedness to the 
evolving User Experience on smartphones.
With its complicated protocol, and federation needs--the classical finding 
others problem--it was simply no match for centralized services using simple 
but usable identifiers (phone numbers), even if they may have been using XMPP 
'under the hood'.
That then is what gave us the current zoo of messengers we all love and like 
(if someone wants to further discuss this point, please feel free to write me 
on What'sApp, Signal, Telegram, Threema, Facebook Messenger, Skype, 
Skype4Bussiness/Lync, Google Meet, reddit, or via netcat on tcp/2342).

So, in the end, the dynamics around new features adopted by a few players 
representing a major subset of the ecosystem can have a long-lasting impact 
that may ultimately interact with, e.g., the deliverability discussions we 
regularly have. (Most recently, tightened SPF requirements by Google, and I am 
not claiming that _that_ move was necessarily a bad one; But one with 
consequences to consider that are not strictly technical in nature, but cross 
influence technology, i.e., in this case, mail.)

With best regards,
Tobias

[1] 
https://doing-stupid-things.as59645.net/burning/world/resillience/2022/06/30/propositions-part-4.html
[2] Page 78, Sec. VII.E.6, Point 206 ff 
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/20201216%20COMPLAINT_REDACTED.pdf
  
[3] https://googletalk.blogspot.com/2006/01/xmpp-federation.html
[4] https://www.facebook.com/notes/10160197317616729/ 
[5] 
https://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2013/05/google-talk-discontinued-will-google-keep-its-promise-and-give-xmpp-users-a-way-out/
 
[6] 
https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4334242/larry-page-to-tech-world-being-negative-is-not-how-we-make-progress

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Re: [mailop] Gmail Dynamic Email / Impact on Email Ecosystem

[Taavi Eomäe via mailop]

They seem to be a text/x-amp-html, and require a text/html or
text/plain fallback, so other clients would simply use the fallback.


I think many of us have seen the "fallback" from text/html to 
text/plain. "Sorry your e-mail client can't display HTML", well it can 
but I kinda prefer text first and you just sent me useless garbage.



The following is not directly related to your letter, just the topic.

I do understand the need for something better than the inconsistent (and 
thus difficult) text/html we have now. Static-only AMP might even fit 
the bill, but static letters do not seem to be the goal at the moment.


Unfortunately I don't see anyone but the giants succeeding in pushing 
for a new widely-supported content type either. Just looking at the 
deployment of other email improvements. I've long yearned for something 
like text/restructured or text/markdown that is trivial to convert to 
both text and HTML, but looks nicer if natively rendered and is easy to 
manually type out.


Anyways, point being that if we don't want AMP there should be an 
equally attractive alternative widely deployed.


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Re: [mailop] Gmail Dynamic Email / Impact on Email Ecosystem

[Michael Peddemors via mailop]

IT also requires one to have the resources of Gmail to implement... 
Where they care about every change that occurs.. The security 
implications of the ability to 'change' alone should make you shudder.


Every MTA would then have to apply security in a whole new way..

Imagine malware that changes links one letter at a time, your previously 
vetted email now has a link to a malware domain.


It's a slippery slope, and as pointed out there are other ways to make 
dynamic content available, mail is meant to be static..


IMHO

On 2022-08-11 16:06, Ángel via mailop wrote:

On 2022-08-11 at 10:55 +, Gellner, Oliver wrote:

In other MUAs they display like normal emails, Id expect that Googles
dynamic emails behave the same way.


They seem to be a text/x-amp-html, and require a text/html or
text/plain fallback, so other clients would simply use the fallback.
At least the design seems robust, enforcing that this new standard is s
trictly followed.

Like Tobias, I also found about them really recently. I am not really
convinced about them so far. Not the way Google implemented them, but
the underlying concept.
I understand why an email that is kept up-to-date can be thought to
make sense in some cases, but a "dynamic email" breaks the concept of
an email that we have been using for the last fifty years.

An email archive used to be similar to an archived physical letter in
that it is immutable. You could go back and read the same content you
viewed a few days ago. With this, you could find it now contains
something different. Even two people receiving the same email could get
shown different content.

This was already possible to some extent by using external images, but
only as a subproduct.

This attempt is a big change on the basics of email, and only time will
tell us if it changes things radically, or ends up discarded.


Regards



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Re: [mailop] Gmail Dynamic Email / Impact on Email Ecosystem

[Ángel via mailop]

On 2022-08-11 at 10:55 +, Gellner, Oliver wrote:
> In other MUAs they display like normal emails, Id expect that Googles
> dynamic emails behave the same way.

They seem to be a text/x-amp-html, and require a text/html or
text/plain fallback, so other clients would simply use the fallback.
At least the design seems robust, enforcing that this new standard is s
trictly followed.

Like Tobias, I also found about them really recently. I am not really
convinced about them so far. Not the way Google implemented them, but
the underlying concept.
I understand why an email that is kept up-to-date can be thought to
make sense in some cases, but a "dynamic email" breaks the concept of
an email that we have been using for the last fifty years.

An email archive used to be similar to an archived physical letter in
that it is immutable. You could go back and read the same content you
viewed a few days ago. With this, you could find it now contains
something different. Even two people receiving the same email could get
shown different content.

This was already possible to some extent by using external images, but
only as a subproduct.

This attempt is a big change on the basics of email, and only time will
tell us if it changes things radically, or ends up discarded.


Regards



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Re: [mailop] Gmail Dynamic Email / Impact on Email Ecosystem

[Gellner, Oliver via mailop]

> Am 11.08.2022 um 01:47 schrieb Tobias Fiebig via mailop :
>
> Heho,
> The gmail feature 'dynamic email' [1] just flew by me, and I was somewhat 
> wondering whether this is google proprietary, or if there is some 
> standardization going on (already completed?) which I missed.
> From the product page it currently looks more like an integration in the 
> google ecosystem;

Microsoft Outlook has similar features, of course for Microsofts ecosystem. For 
example email notifications from Yammer (a enterprise social network from 
Microsoft) load a live view of the Yammer webpages inside the email pane of 
Outlook.
In other MUAs they display like normal emails, Id expect that Googles dynamic 
emails behave the same way.

—
BR Oliver


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Re: [mailop] Gmail Dynamic Email / Impact on Email Ecosystem

[Brandon Long via mailop]

https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail is the Google developer
information about dynamic email, that link was about controlling the
content with Google Workspace.

The standardization is via AMP, docs at https://amp.dev/about/email/ and a
pretty short list of other providers who support it.

The death of email will come from outside the eco-system, not from
individual attempts to extend it.  And death is probably a ways off, more
like email is going the way of postal mail, rarely used for personal
communication and more for
receipts and confirmations and work for a while it seemed like RSVPs
were moving to FB or whatever, now I don't even know.  User surveys and
more in-depth discussions with folks, especially skewing younger, is very
interesting if
you want to know how perceptions of email are...

Brandon

On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 4:44 PM Tobias Fiebig via mailop 
wrote:

> Heho,
> The gmail feature 'dynamic email' [1] just flew by me, and I was somewhat
> wondering whether this is google proprietary, or if there is some
> standardization going on (already completed?) which I missed.
> From the product page it currently looks more like an integration in the
> google ecosystem;
>
> Either way, I believe that this might be something to have a discussion
> on. If it is backed by open standards, there are some interesting
> discussions to be had re: impact of such a feature in terms of
> security/privacy.
>
> If this is a google-ecosystem only feature, I'd kind of like to put on my
> doom-sayer hat and claim that this smells a bit like the death of XMPP;
> While technically still email (and currently integrated with the rest of
> the world), google is in a rather dominant market position (~15% of
> domains, iirc), and such individual-actor product decissions may actually
> send quiet some ripples through the email ecosystem as a whole (Why didn't
> you RSVP? I send you an RSVP request from my gmail?!). (Not saying that
> email's UX can be a tad dusty... but changes like this might really benefit
> from a really concious engagement with the potential implications.)
>
>  So, apart from my rather centralization-critical gut reaction... what do
> you think about features like this being added by individual ESPs and its
> impact on how email will develop?
>
> With best regards,
> Tobias
>
> [1] https://support.google.com/a/answer/9709409?hl=en
>
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[mailop] Gmail Dynamic Email / Impact on Email Ecosystem

[Tobias Fiebig via mailop]

Heho,
The gmail feature 'dynamic email' [1] just flew by me, and I was somewhat 
wondering whether this is google proprietary, or if there is some 
standardization going on (already completed?) which I missed.
From the product page it currently looks more like an integration in the google 
ecosystem;

Either way, I believe that this might be something to have a discussion on. If 
it is backed by open standards, there are some interesting discussions to be 
had re: impact of such a feature in terms of security/privacy.

If this is a google-ecosystem only feature, I'd kind of like to put on my 
doom-sayer hat and claim that this smells a bit like the death of XMPP; While 
technically still email (and currently integrated with the rest of the world), 
google is in a rather dominant market position (~15% of domains, iirc), and 
such individual-actor product decissions may actually send quiet some ripples 
through the email ecosystem as a whole (Why didn't you RSVP? I send you an RSVP 
request from my gmail?!). (Not saying that email's UX can be a tad dusty... but 
changes like this might really benefit from a really concious engagement with 
the potential implications.)

 So, apart from my rather centralization-critical gut reaction... what do you 
think about features like this being added by individual ESPs and its impact on 
how email will develop?

With best regards,
Tobias

[1] https://support.google.com/a/answer/9709409?hl=en

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