Google will make it easy for strangers to email you
marco.org
marco.org
This just makes communication with people you already have a sort-of relationship with easier. Seems like an all around good thing. If you really, really feel like only a whitelist of people should ever contact you then you can always go into the options and turn it off. But why would you?
i don't get it. isn't that how email works? what people are currently not allowed to send messages to my gmail inbox?
On Facebook, you can send a message to anyone from their profile, but it shows up within Facebook rather than the person's e-mail client (and it shows up in 'other' too.)
Edit: Facebook did not email me the last time I received something in my Other inbox (but that was a couple of years ago); perhaps that has changed?
Edit2: Being able to send a Google+ message from your e-mail client is a nice convenience that takes advantage of the fact that Google owns both properties. (It would be nice if it also provided a lookup for Facebook users.) I think that is all that this is, which means there is no controversy. I imagine you could already write someone a message that shows up in their email without knowing what their email address is by messaging them within Google+. If that is the case, this change is purely an added convenience that doesn't impact spamming at all.
And that prevents what exactly... people sending you email? I don't get it.
Now they need to know a different piece of pseudo-public information, your G+ username. Isn't this just a lateral shift?
I mean, there's still a "report spam" button, right?
Marco has clearly just lost it.
My email address has never been opt-in, ever since I started using email back in 1994.
Don't want people to email / communicate with you, maybe you shouldn't sign up for a social network? Google is linking your GoogleMail inbox to your Google+ account to facilitate communication. Don't like it? Opt out and calm down.
You're right that we can delete our G+ account. The point is that we're trying to explain to Google why it might not be in their best interest to add 'features' like this, at least without an opt-out mechanism.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i1l-4aC-wpk/Us3x3EySkOI/AAAAAAAABM...
This is very similar to the Snapchat snafu, and they handled it just as poorly.
These are both examples of what's wrong with growth hacking.
I'm aware that there is an opt out, but thats not really the point. gmail was pitched as the way webmail should be, and thats how I use it. I put up with google scanning my mail to provide tailored ads for this service. Why do I also need to be vigilant for regular changes that google make that negatively affect my privacy?
Nobody wants to use google+, if google keeps trying to shove it down peoples throats, nobody is going to use google.
I don't understand why so many people defend google on this?
Why should I have to opt out of all this crap, when all I ever wanted was god damn email. Google has delusions of being a social network. If they want to add these conveniences for the three people that use google+ fine, but for gods sack make them opt in.
If you prefer not to pay with inconvenience but with dollars , there are some great paid providers out there.
I don't think it's that much different if the from: tag is changed from "Google+ Notifications" to "John Smith" and the subject is changed accordingly. The in-Gmail treatment looks reasonable to me, based on Google's blog post. [edited for clarity]
A limiting factor is that unless you are following that person, or they are following you, there might be too many matches to the name for Google+ to find the right John Smith, for example.
Google seems deadset on catching up to facebook, but facebook is already trying to catchup to snapchat & the next wave of "social" - which seems decidedly more private.
It's almost as if by trying to catchup to FB - google is only falling further behind.
Regarding the feature it seems pretty good. It will definitely help normal people find each other and communicate more and maybe will cut down on people mailing me because they make mistyped or guessed someone else's address.
Google has taken a collection of services that are not functionally related -- a search engine, a mapping engine, a hosted mail service, a social network, a video sharing site, a web-based document editing system with cloud storage, and more -- and made the following unilateral decisions:
(1) The default is to have one Google account that links you to all services. (2) You are strongly encouraged to use your real name for that account. (3) The default for linking services together is opt-out rather than opt-in.
Google puts a lot of effort into making you have one account across all of Google. The signal difference between them and, well, everyone else (with the possible exception of Facebook) is that it's increasingly difficult to not be part of the Google ecosystem. Yes, the median HN reader can come up with a laundry list of other services to replace everything Google, but most users can't and even most technically competent users probably aren't going to.
The upshot of the three principles above is that in practice, anyone with a Google Account -- which is at this point probably a substantial percentage of the world population -- has a very good chance of being able to send email to you if they have no other information but your real name.
Is that the end of privacy as we know it? Of course not. But do you really, really think that only crazy weirdo Apple users would possibly find it just a touch troubling that Google thinks it's okay for this to be the default? Do you really think it's insane for me to think that Google should perhaps consider that their users might deserve privacy from both other Google users and Google itself, as opposed to just the "privacy" granted by better spam blocking algorithms and SSL?
Now, I see the opposite of what you see. Because my gmail address consist of just my name, and my name is common, I _already_ get loads and loads of mail destined for other people with my name. I find this annoying and I have no way to stop it. With this new feature, at least people who are using Gmail to compose their message will have a better chance of finding the right person, because the contacts in the composer show the profile picture from Google+. That means I will get less of this mail. It also means that the mail I do get will go to the "Social" tab of my Gmail inbox, which I don't even display by default, so it will be out of my face entirely. And, finally, I have a way to retaliate, because deleting their messages means those misguided people can never contact me via Google+ again. Nice.
As for your other points I don't think they are even worth addressing. You aren't seriously proposing that Google should maintain separate account systems for Gmail, Google search, Google maps, Google+, Youtube, Docs and Drive, and every other product, are you? Can't you imaging the password maintenance/hijacking/support nightmare that would ensue?
Is this kind of thing really necessary? OK, you don't like them, we get it. But language like this does nothing to elevate the tone of the discussion. Sorry to nitpick on what may well be a valid point (I don't follow either of their writing enough to know), but come on - why not just to be a bit more civil?
I agree the language was uncalled for but I've followed these two (bloggers) in the past. And trust me on this, original commenter (OC) is spot on. These two bloggers (and the elk) unabashedly post in this disgusting manner, all the time - so much that me and many people suspect, from time to time, they are on Apple's payroll. It's like a blind fanaticism, one which doesn't retain even basic logic and self respect. It's not "Apple does right", but they rather like "It's only Apple that does it right". It goes beyond fanboyism.
Maybe OC should have tried harder looking for civilised words to convey his emotions.
What, "mildly critical of Google"?
Dude, get some perspective. Are you 12?
The latter has never required the former.
You’re just eyeballs. Body parts and ad-targeting data. Google doesn’t care about you at all. You’ve tolerated enough already that it’s pretty clear you’re not really going anywhere.
Couldn't you say the same about any company? Say, developers and Apple?
You're just dollar signs and app figures. Apple doesn't care about you at all. You've tolerated enough already that it's pretty clear you're not really going anywhere.
Next.
A discussion that never goes beyond "I (dis)agree" isn't much of a discussion.
1. This was not a feature that I originally signed up for, and increases the possibility of irritating/trivial items to be sent to me, I have a spam filter for things like this and in general would rather not mark google as spam, they send me a good number of other things which I do find useful (which seems to be an abuse of the "trust" however thin that I have with them).
2. My private email is perceived as somewhat sacrosanct even though it is an obvious federated system. A somewhat apt analogy is my home address, while some people could definitely find it through various means and communication happens all the time by parties I do not want to send me mail, I do not give it nor do I invite strangers to approach it, and I especially dont like it when a friend of a friend gives out my address to strangers.
3. In general, opt-out features of social networks are by design an anti-feature meant to drive more engagement for them, and has little to no perceived benefit to me. (Yes you can say facebook does it, and that is why I dont have a facebook account)
Better?
At worst, this is a mild G+ related annoyance...
The problem is that it defaults to "Everyone on Google+" For those of you mystified that this is pissing people off, it's because not everyone on Google+ wanted a Google+ account precisely because Google is shoehorning it into everything! "Just opt out" misses the point; some of us don't want to have to dig around in settings for a service we didn't want to opt out of stuff like being put on a spammable directory for strangers.
If it defaulted to "Circles" I'd have a hard time complaining about it; people who don't want Google+ don't have Circles. But as it stands, this is "we're quietly opting you into spam." (and for those who say it won't happen, I've already gotten more YouTube spam since the G+ rollout than I have over the rest of the account's lifetime combined, and my YouTube account is old)
On Facebook / Twitter you are receiving a notification through their service, and then their service is emailing you about said notification (likely with the contents of the message).
With this it maps your email address to your public Google+ name, and auto-fills your name for anyone who wishes to contact you through Gmail, which appears as a regular email client. You receive the email as a normal email (as far as I'm aware, may be not the case).
I suspect a lot of the anger stems from this subtle distinction. With Facebook and Twitter, when you sign up for the account you also sign up for the relevant notifications. With this Gmail feature, many people did not sign up for their public G+ name to be mapped to their email address, your name auto-completing in other peoples' "To:" fields.
That said, I don't really have an issue with this feature because I don't have a G+ account, and if I did have a G+ account I'd probably find it pretty useful.
Anyway, I do actually think this is useful functionality. It can only be sent from another GMail user, so Google will quickly know if it's being abused.
"How it works with email addresses
Emailing Google+ connections works a bit differently to protect the privacy of email addresses. Your email address isn't visible to your Google+ connections until you send them an email, and their email addresses are not visible to you until they respond. "
Beyond that, since Google uses emails for login, this essentially gives someone half of the equation to hack your account.
It also enables spammers to quickly collect legit emails for their spam lists.
I really doubt spammers are going to find these useful for harvesting.
"Your email address isn't visible to your Google+ connections until you send them an email, and their email addresses are not visible to you until they respond."
Doesn't change my opinion on the 'feature,' but does make it less painful. I wonder if the backlash in this thread has more to do with people's distaste for Marco than it does with the issue at hand.
How does this help anyone other than people that didn't have the email already?
Just like we call some problems 'first world problem', I'd call this '15 second annoyance'. Ie the worst case scenario is that you have to spend 15 seconds fixing something - not the end of the world.
I am more bothered (and think there is a level of difference) between this and cases where Google does something you can't opt-out of (such as change Compose window in Gmail or shut down a service). Those are real issues.
Do ya'll hate Marco that much?
This seems broken for me, I have to delete both unwanted emails from my inbox in addition to the category, even though I dont use the categories feature per se.
To the second, Google+ is unique among social networks in that large swaths of its userbase didn't voluntarily sign up for it.
It might be sensible to at least wait and see how bad the abuse gets before calling Google "sleazy" for opening the doors to massive abuse.
Google is clearly relying on their very good anti-spam software and ownership of the socialnetwork to keep your inbox clean from spam.
- "breaks" browser history - obsolete with middle-click, open-in-new-tab - doesn't work well on mobile? - it's a coin toss whether or not the link you're opening will open in a new page or not on mobile