Gmail Still Isn’t Perfect, Even with Mail Fetcher
December 9th, 2006 (4:11pm) Anne Zelenka 31 Comments
Google has announced Gmail access via POP3 to other email accounts. Mail Fetcher is only available to a “limited number of users” but once you get it, you’ll have one more way to use GMail as your main email client. Mike Arrington says Gmail Just Got Perfect. Did it really?
POP, a.k.a. the Post Office Protocol, allows you to download email messages from another server into your Gmail account. This differs from simply forwarding messages from the external account because you can get at messages that you received prior to enabling the forwarding. So if you have lots of old email that you’d like to fetch into your Gmail account and make it searchable, you should be able to do it with Mail Fetcher. Going forward, though, it’s not obvious how POP access is significantly better than simply forwarding from the additional account… unless for some reason your external account offers POP but not forwarding. For context, Yahoo only enables forwarding and POP access in its $19.99/year Yahoo! Mail Plus. If you can’t forward mail from your Yahoo account, you can’t get it by POP either.
Might this mean the “on behalf of you@gmail.com” will no longer appear on emails with a custom from address? Perhaps not, if you follow the link on the Mail Fetcher announcement to the information about custom from addresses. The customized Gmail ‘From:’ address for POP3-accessed accounts looks like it will function just like the custom from addresses already available. Your Gmail address is included in the email header’s sender field, and some email clients, notably Microsoft Outlook, will display this as “From you@domain.com on behalf of you@gmail.com.” Perhaps this meets some anti-spoofing/anti-spam standards. Any WWD readers aware of Internet mail standards that might apply? If an account is accessed via a POP client, can that client represent itself as sending from that email address?
Gmail still lacks IMAP capabilities, which would allow online and offline access with synchronization to other mail clients, something that’s becoming increasingly important as we access our email from all sorts places and devices. Even if Google implements a disconnected version of their interface, that doesn’t entirely solve the anywhere access problem, because many devices can’t access the standard or mobile version of Gmail. But lots of software talks IMAP.
For more ways Gmail could get closer to perfect, see Liz Gannes’ Please Add These Features to Gmail. Be sure to read the comments too–WWD readers have lots of ideas for ways to make Gmail better.
31 Comments Post your own comment
Deepak says: December 9th, 2006 4:42pm
It’s not perfect, but its still by far my favorite way of doing email. I used to use it for pop, but I love the tagging and keyboard shortcuts so much, I use the web client exclusively now. It’s spam filter is light years ahead of yahoo (to pick another example). Yahoo’s new mail client is pretty much unusable and the spam is terrible, so I have pretty much abandoned it.
Things I’d like to see (which Liz does cover)
- better sorting
- improved integration with google calendar
- perhaps improved contact handling, but this has never been an issue
bex says: December 9th, 2006 5:28pm
Barring the use of a POP Extension that would need to be supported by both gmail (they don’t appear to) and your other account, POP is a retrieve mail only protocol. You typically send with SMTP.
Therefore, the From line will not have a part with POP mail and will continue to behave in the manner described.
Chris Gilmer says: December 9th, 2006 5:37pm
This is a great new feature from Google – It allows for a lot of added convenience, especially if you find yourself checking five other email accounts throughout the day. Think of the extra time you can spend slacking off at Starbucks! [Note to self, no more Starbucks referencing.]
Anne Zelenka says: December 9th, 2006 6:50pm
Thanks for clarifying that POP is retrieve only, Bex. Seems like those who want the custom from: to work differently will likely be out of luck even with Mail Fetcher.
@Chris: Starbucks is just too rich a reference, isn’t it? Hard to avoid it.
@Deepak: I tried the new Yahoo client for maybe one day and then switched back to the old one–it was awful! I agree, gmail is very nice, and I use it as my main client, even if it does identify itself as the sender of my mail from my other addresses.
GigaOM » GMail Got a Little Better says: December 9th, 2006 7:01pm
[...] Anne Zelenka is not that impressed by Mail Fetcher as well. She gives her reasons over on Web Worker Daily. Liz has a list of things Google can do to make it nearly perfect. But then she is a passionate user! [...]
Deepak says: December 9th, 2006 8:45pm
Anne
I don’t blame you. I agree that the interface can be an acquired taste like OM says on his blog, but labels and keyboard shortcuts pretty much do it for me.
Diego says: December 9th, 2006 9:18pm
Interestingly, if you get a yahoo.com.au email address then you get POP access for free.
Rob Chuah says: December 9th, 2006 11:47pm
The “on behalf of you@gmail.com” annoyed the hell out of me !
sumeshpremraj says: December 10th, 2006 5:14am
hey check out this
sumeshpremraj says: December 10th, 2006 5:15am
mistaken link- sorry. This is my blog – Digital Dreams.
Judi Sohn says: December 10th, 2006 5:48am
re: the “on behalf of” thing…yeah, talk about going to elation to deflation quickly. I was thrilled to read that my Gmail account will eventually check POP email, but it loses its functionality until I can reply to email without it being obvious it’s coming from Gmail. I do it anyway. I forward all of my POP email (work and personal) to Gmail addresses. Then when I check email from my cell phone, I use Google’s nice little Java app to check Gmail instead of my phone’s brain-dead messaging app. My colleagues know that if they see the …on behalf of… that I’m on my phone.
I can’t see where turning this on will save me anything over the forwarding I’m currently doing. If anything, if my host is having trouble delivering email to my POP box but it does arrive at my host, I can check it in Gmail first when it’s not working in any other client (has happened from time to time).
Anne Zelenka says: December 10th, 2006 7:21am
Judi – I think Gmail may be acting appropriately in identifying itself as the sender because of the email forgery issue, and it’s MS Outlook that should do something different, not display the “on behalf of” BS. (I’m assuming you’re using Outlook… that’s where I have heard about the problem.)
I don’t see any great benefit in this either, though I have often thought I’d like to get my emails out of my Yahoo account and organize them into my gmail storage so they’d be searchable there.
@Deepak – I really like Gmail, it was the new Yahoo interface I couldn’t stand. Gmail is my main email interface.
alamster says: December 10th, 2006 9:35am
For me gmail only isn’t enough, forward to my local webmail server then it’s true power since all spam eliminated by gmail power .
Chuck says: December 10th, 2006 11:18am
I use gmail for my personal e-mail account. I have never found the interface all that helpful. For example there is not a simple forward button at the top of the message. That has always bothered me. Also, I find the conversational style to be a little troublesome as well.
strategicalliance says: December 10th, 2006 12:52pm
its all good, it is better than some of the providers right now…
É coisa antiga, mas descobri mais um serviço do Gmail at blog palmeirense falador says: December 10th, 2006 12:54pm
[...] Gmail Still Isn’t Perfect, Even with Mail Fetcher Web Worker Daily | Anne Zelenka [...]
Judi Sohn says: December 10th, 2006 12:58pm
Anne, you’re right. It is just a problem with Outlook. However, Gmail goes thorugh the step of requiring you to confirm that the address you want to use for the “From” does actually belong to you. So I’m not sure under what circumstances someone can use a spoof email address coming out of Gmail. I can change the “From” address in Outlook or Mail.app to be anyone I want with no confirmation. I’m only limited by what my set SMTP server will let me get away with. Gmail already goes through that confirmation step, so the “on behalf of…” thing seems to be overkill.
Ryan says: December 10th, 2006 6:20pm
I believe that the SMTP protocol allows for the user to define the “From” address for an email sent. Therefore if you were to write your own email client, you could send email from any address that you wished. The obvious drawback is that you would not be able to receive any responses to that email unless you have access to the email account that you listed in the “From” section. Because Gmail requires sending authentication(either you are logged into the website or you enter your username and password from an external client), it is guaranteed that you are allowed to be sending messages from that address and that it is a valid address for the person who receives the message to send email back to.
The point of the above paragraph was to point out that Gmail could allow users to specify a send address that would NOT include the “on the behalf of…” mumbo jumbo since users are either already authenticated on the website or will have to authenticate to send the message from Gmail’s SMTP servers.
I know that Thunderbird, my email client of choice, specifies both a “From” address and a “Sender” address specifying the SMTP defined “From” email address and the SMTP defined “Sender” that authenticated at the server to send the email.
Nasir says: December 11th, 2006 1:06am
Its a great feature added by google.
Cote' says: December 11th, 2006 9:27am
That “on behalf of” feature is a killer. When I started at RedMonk, I was using GMail for everything, including my @redmonk.com address. However, because of that “on behalf of” crap, people would (a.) start using my GMail address instead of my @redmonk.com one (some people still do!), and, (b.) several people thought my name was “Bushwald Cote’” to the point of sending some emails to others asking “who is this Bushwald guy?”
As a consequence to those misunderstandings, I switched to using Mail.app with Act On to simulate Archiving and it’s worked out well.
Joshua Bloom says: December 11th, 2006 10:06am
Chuck,
You can forward emails right from the top of the message by clicking on the down arrow at the top right of the message and selecting Forward.
You can also use the f keyboard shortcut to forward.
-Josh
shelbycockrell says: December 11th, 2006 12:01pm
Gmail is my favorite mail, hands down. I like te search feature. And hey, I like your blog. It was interesting to read!
Clint says: December 11th, 2006 2:13pm
I am starting to like Gmail more everyday after using fusemail.com for the past 2 years, which is pretty good also. I have all my emails forwarded to my fusemail account and I can response using any of my email names that I like. The really only down fall of fusemail.com is paying a monthly fee.
Oskar Syahbana says: December 12th, 2006 6:04am
POP3 on Gmail sucks… It failed a lot when you have a large numbers of email to be downloaded (and in the end if the connection is broken, you have to redownload everything).
But all in all, I love their interface and that’s why I subscribed to their hosted solutions :)
ryan says: December 12th, 2006 2:56pm
my assessment of traditional folder inbox type mail is for me it’s a no win scenario. Here are some things I find problematic:
- Cant search very quickly generally. Usually resorting to search by sender (oh right, FOO Sent that, let me scan all emails from…)
- No threading – the threading tends to break down or be inconsistent. Ooops I moved that 1 email out of the thread to the OTHER folder and now it doesnt appear.
- Even with threading, gmail’s thread view is superior to all others I have found.
- Folders: An email can really only exist in 1 folder at a time. Forces me to create taxonomies that I wish I didn’t have to create.
- Labels help – can label with multiple things. Labels can be removed w/o removing the email. Hooray!
Now all I wish for is a OSX Gmail client – in the sense it works offline, based on OSX but has a similar interface to Gmail. sigh.
Nasir says: December 13th, 2006 12:37am
It was interesting to read this blog.
brentashley » Blog Archive » GMail on Path to Perfection says: December 13th, 2006 7:55am
[...] Michael Arrington thinks that Gmail Just Got Perfect with its new Mail Fetcher feature. Jackson West demurs to that notion, citing almost-there and missing features that make Gmail fall somewhat shy of perfection. [...]
What is Gmail? says: January 1st, 2007 3:02pm
Yahoo and Hotmail have been able to read mail from other POP3 accoutns for years. I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about. This is what makes Gmail perfect?!? Then Hotmail was perfect circa 1998.
Jordan says: February 20th, 2007 7:55am
The “on behalf of” issue annoys me to no end. Apparently the issue is that Gmail includes your Gmail address in the “Sender” header of all out-going e-mail, no matter what “personality” it was sent from. I have a Fastmail.fm account, which also allows multiple personalities but doesn’t give rise to “on behalf of” messages in Outlook — the difference appears to be that Fastmail uses the “X-Sender” header instead.
It’s a major shame, because I love the Gmail web interface, but I have to be able to use it to check and write from multiple e-mail aliases. So far, this issue is preventing me from doing that.
Eddie says: February 22nd, 2007 3:44am
Hi! Nice site!
Turn Gmail into Your Social Brain « Web Worker Daily says: September 27th, 2007 6:32am
[...] a Gmail user, you probably already know you can consolidate other email accounts into it, with Mail Fetcher or simply by having messages forwarded to your Gmail and adding “from” email addresses [...]