All this screams to me is that google has way too much power in email to be able to implement something like this.
On the one hand we have some companies trying to block things like tracker pixels and other static images for tracking purposes.
Then we have google saying "lets make emails dynamic" and just making it easier to track.
I hope no other email provider adds support for this. Email needs to remain static and platform agnostic.
The problem with all of this is none of it will work because of platform support. Like you said support for AMP Emails is limited to Gmail and maybe a handful of other clients. Part of me wishes that AMP Emails were an actual standard rather than a "standard" that google created to help itself. And with only Gmail really having support, you know this will only ever get used in marketing shenanigans and to more deeply track you.
Yes. Yes!! Exactly the same argument can be made about the web. Why is the answer to this "let's do the same in email" and not "why don't we work to reduce overengineering and complexity"?
Worst case do what many things I have seen do, the act of clicking the button opens a web page that simply states "thank you for doing X". That way regardless of what platform they click it form, it works.
I am assuming you are already building the functionality into a portal that managers can go to and see a list of everyone, so why replicate that functionality in email?
Wanting to have this functionality in email feels like a severe case off over engineering for things we have been doing for a very long time.
There are very few benefits to users but all the benefits for google. This keeps people in Google for longer. That is not something we should accept. Giving google more control.
The ancient way would be, just embedding the spreadsheet in the email, which can be done because html is supported, and then accepting some replies, like "LGTM" to approve right away, or "you need to adjust X" as the review comments.
Although there's problems beyond just being able to handle the email response.
Today is that email is insecure. There's a big push for e2e encryption on instant messaging, but not on email, even while it faces the same problem of privacy not being a default.
And a bigger problem in my mind is that people working on wealthier countries probably have had almost permanent internet access while working for the last 10yr. This might make offline a non-goal for most products/services.
The biggest win from using email today might be how well it works asynchronously.
Speaking of which, when you access Gmail via IMAP, Google replaces every URL in HTML email with a tracking link, having you go through their servers first before being redirected to where you actually want to go.
Does this replacement occurs for free Gmail accounts ?
I'm counting on Google Workspace customers much larger than me to keep gmail in line.
I just checked and though click-and-hold shows the real link, if I tap to open, it actually opens "https://www.google.com/url?q=<original link>" in my browser.
EDIT: This happens for both Workspace and normal "free" accounts.
I'd love for a Firefox Android extension to remove this, alas it doesn't seem to have been 'blessed by Mozilla' to be available on mobile.
This shouldn't even be necessary. I get that Google already has the link cause it's in Gmail.
I already make sure to never allow my mailreader to render HTML or resolve links anyway, though, for security reasons. So I guess this won't affect me any.
Unless something mandatory or highly desirable comes to depend on it. This is what needs to not happen. A bit like banks on smartphones.
About banks and smartphones, it's a tangent but by chance my bank haven't managed to force us to have a smartphone to deal with it so far. They are trying hard though.
For months they have been displaying on web transactions that paying on the web would require the app in a few weeks. Now they just say passive-agressively that it would have been easier with the app because I would not have to type the second code we have to enter without it (except I actually saw how it works with the app and it's not even much more convenient).
I guess we are enough users to have not installed the app.
And indeed, at this point nothing in my life requires a smartphone. It's merely convenient for directions and for showing QR Codes to whatever machine which wants to see some in transport networks.