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Google makes emails more dynamic with AMP for Email
Google today officially launched AMP for Email, its effort to turn emails from static documents into dynamic, web page-like experiences. AMP for Email is coming to Gmail, but other major email providers like Yahoo Mail (which shares its parent company with TechCrunch), Outlook and Mail.ru will also support AMP emails.
[...] With AMP for Email, those messages become interactive. That means you'll be able to RSVP to an event right from the message, fill out a questionnaire, browse through a store's inventory or respond to a comment — all without leaving your web-based email client.
Some of the companies that already support this new format are Booking.com, Despegar, Doodle, Ecwid, Freshworks, Nexxt, OYO Rooms, Pinterest, and redBus. If you regularly get emails from these companies, then chances are you'll receive an interactive email from them in the coming weeks.
[...] [Not] everybody is going to like this (including our own Devin Coldewey).
Also at The Verge, 9to5Google, and Engadget:
As you might imagine, Google is determined to keep this secure. It reviews senders before they're allowed to send AMP-based email, and relatively few will support it out of the gate (including Twilio Sendgrid, Litmus and SparkPost).
Previously: Google Bringing Accelerated Mobile Pages to Email
Related: Kill Google AMP Before It Kills the Web
Google Attempting to Standardize Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP Can Go To Hell
Google Moving to Relinquish Control Over Accelerated Mobile Pages
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:54PM (2 children)
So...this allows Google to track all of these emails, even if they don't touch any gmail addresses, right? And lets them see if you've opened it or not, and collect metrics like how long you looked at it and where your mouse was moving at the time...because it all gets routed through their own cache servers.
What happens to those of us who block Google at the firewall? Assuming Thunderbird would actually attempt to open these someday...I kinda hope they don't...
AMP in general is supposed to be at least partially open, with other providers allowed to create their own AMP caches, yet according to TFS Google is limiting who is allowed to send these mails, so that would seem to indicate that AMP for email is restricted to only Google cache servers? Sounds like EEE to me...
(Score: 2) by progo on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:31PM (1 child)
My understanding is that professional developers ignored it because it looked like a proprietary lock-in gambit.
HTML 4 with no other capabilities -- that's all the accelerated mobile pages I need. If you need emails that lead to actions, hyperlink to a web service. That's what web services are for.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:45PM
As they should...
But according to the Wiki page at least, Cloudflare has an AMP cache as well. And it sounds like anyone could build their own in theory. So if Google is controlling who can use this AMP for email stuff, then there must be some additional lock-in here. Potentially the implementation of this isn't open, and Google may be contractually obligating the services that support it to only use Google caches....perhaps instead of the usual "...BUT WITH A COMPUTER!" idiocy, Google claims some IP on AMP "...BUT THROUGH EMAIL!"