MBOX-Line: From mrc+imap at panda.com  Wed May 18 18:35:58 2011
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Mark Crispin <mrc+imap@panda.com>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:46 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Beat up on Gmail
In-Reply-To: <4DD4617A.8040001@verizon.net>
References: <BANLkTimVNPwLV4gJ+aYCOGyDd-BN_Ka4PA@mail.gmail.com>
	<4DD4617A.8040001@verizon.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.2.00.1105181735220.24932@hsinghsing.panda.com>

On Wed, 18 May 2011, Joshua Cranmer wrote:
> My experience over the past several years has been that people who use
> email clients instead of webmail tend to be a more overly conservative
> bunch of people than those who do not use them. In that vein, the people
> who would be accessing Gmail over IMAP would probably have preferred the
> traditional folder model over Gmail's label concepts;

+1

Don't overlook Google's "youth oriented culture".  Not exactly youth any
more since there's a new generation now.  But it is a culture that very
much has the "everything that came before us sucks and we don't care"
mentality of its founders' generation.

This is distinct from the Apple mindset, which is that of a cult.

> I remember my
> disappointment to have discovered that my "normal" email usage model
> just didn't well with Gmail's implementation (what? delete doesn't
> actually delete the mail?)

I only use Gmail for spam from Google.  I doubt that mail that touches
Google's servers ever really goes away; at best it becomes invisible to
you.

>> No client our users actually used would have done
>> anything with the keywords,
> If this information were made public, I'm sure knowledgeable people
> would have asked for some kind of standardization in this regard.

Google's sole focus in supporting IMAP is to trick Outlook into giving a
more or less Gmail web experience.  They don't care what it does to
compliant clients.

Once you understand that point, the implementation of IMAP Gmail makes
complete sense.

I once made the mistake of compiling a large set of itemized and detailed
issues of what Google, Microsoft, and Apple each did wrong, complete with
examples and citations.  I spent long days on this effort, and eventually
delivered the appropriate issue lists to each of them.  The vast majority
of those issues remain unfixed.

I won't say who, but one of the threesome actually said "this list is too
long, narrow it down to one or two."

Then there is Yahoo, whose SMTP server still has a bug that I identified
in the 1990s!  I recently talked with some folks in Venezuela who ran up
against that bug; what a blast from the past.

At some point, you have to assume that they don't give a damn.  Perhaps
they are right.  Consumers have grown accustomed to the fact that email
software sucks; for the most part they've moved away from it.  There just
is no expectation, much less demand, for email that doesn't suck.

Maybe we need product liability laws for software.  Imagine me as a
federal bureaucrat empowered to slap daily fines on these cretins for not
fixing their bugs.  When it comes to fixing bugs, and having bugs get
fixed, I can be relentless.  Oh I would have such fun.  Hah!

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
