back to article Who wants dynamic dancing animations and code in their emails? Everyone! says Google

Having last year axed its scanning of Gmail messages after years of withering privacy criticism, Google has decided to court controversy again in this area. Now it is extending its much-loved Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) technology to email inboxes. In a blog post on Tuesday, Gmail product manager Aakash Sahney announced …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who cares

    I block email spam the sane way as amp spam.

    Slow news day?????

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Who cares

      Thanks for that insightful observation, anon.

      C.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Who cares

      I fucking love Google and post this kind of "don't worry about it, they're great" bollocks relentlessly whenever they are mentioned.

  2. Mark 85

    Singing, dancing ads in e-mail with javascript, 3rd-parties, etc. and that entails? No thanks. I'll pass and stick with my "text-only" email. Damn, the mentality of the "audience" these days if that's what they want.

    1. Shadow Systems

      At Mark 85, RE: plain text email.

      I wish I could up vote you a hundred more times. Since I can only give you one, I'll leave $100 with the barman to substitute. ... Now hand me the bowl of mixed party nuts & let me read my plain text email. =-)

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      I'll pass and stick with my "text-only" email

      Some of us fondly remember the days of 7-bit ASCII emails. And have configured their email clients to do text-only and ignore this new-fangled penchant for all-singing, all-dancing, intrusive HTML.

      Some people may find this appealing.

      Not I. A hundred, thousand times not I.

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
        Facepalm

        requires JavaScript loaded from a content delivery network, which isn't optimal in terms of security.

        I would like to nominate this as "understatement of the week".

    3. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Don't despair of humanity. Nobody asked for this, and nobody wants this. Except for marketing departments of course.

      1. handleoclast

        Except for marketing departments of course.

        The only possible response.

    4. phuzz Silver badge

      "Damn, the mentality of the "audience" these days if that's what they want."

      Nobody wants it in their inbox, but the advertisers want it, and Google makes (almost) all it's money from advertisers, so...

      Why would you think that there is an 'audience' for this?

    5. ForthIsNotDead

      The "audience" doesn't want it at all. It has been foisted upon them by Google, who are reacting to their customers demands (i.e. the people that pay for advertising) to let them do this kind of thing.

      We're not the customers, as I'm sure you're aware.

      We're the victims.

  3. bombastic bob Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    Yet ANOTHER reason!

    Yet ANOTHER reason to *NEVER* *VIEW* *MAIL* *AS* *HTML*.

    because, scripting and style sheets are next. you KNOW it's coming! And embedded ADS in your e-mail, courtesy "whatever free e-mail service" you send/receive with.

    Don't doubt me. Consider the following:

    a) we can just block the web ads and still view the content

    b) an operating system with ADS in it?

    c) subscription-based OFFICE programs?

    d) An annual fee just to use an OS?

    I can see the possibility of click-through ads to view your e-mail (particularly with HTML mail viewers). Or, WORSE, click-through ads to SEND mail!

    icon because paranoia

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: Yet ANOTHER reason!

      HTML is just HTML.

      It's a page description language.

      Now, embedded Javascript, you don't want for sure.

      Just use a minimal HTML viewer that hasn't been written by bling addicts and that checks conformance of the input to standards. Because Langsec, you know.

      1. sabroni Silver badge

        Re: Yet ANOTHER reason!

        Yeah, HTML is just HTML. Add in CSS and media queries and you've got a nice little device sniffer that tells the sender exactly what capabilities your device has. And that's just off the top of my head, the people who are good at this stuff will have hundreds of better, cleverer ideas.

        I'm with the tin-foilers on this one!

        1. Randy Hudson

          Re: Yet ANOTHER reason!

          I think "minimal HTML viewer" meant one that only views content inline in the message. So inline CSS would be OK. Inline images would be OK. But I'm pretty sure the OP meant one that doesn't make any kind of outbound HTTP call when viewing the message.

          1. bombastic bob Silver badge
            Black Helicopters

            Re: Yet ANOTHER reason!

            " I'm pretty sure the OP meant one that doesn't make any kind of outbound HTTP call when viewing the message."

            that's one, but there are many things that style sheets can do that pose a potential problem. there's also HTML5 content (yes I really wanted to see that streaming video when I opened an e-mail) and things like that. But style sheets can have script-like behavior, too. They can get really large, and really complicated. And, of course, loading the style sheet across 'teh intarwebs' identifies YOU as the mail recipient, even if all it does is check to see that you have the latest version with a 'HEAD' request.

            a style sheet can, for example, passively determine what your screen resolution is. Content that uses a particular style can then (theoretically) use this information to "phone home" that info on you. I forget the exact details on how it works, it has something to do with being able to manage auto-sizing column widths as one possible usage. I've actually worked on customer web pages that do this. Don't ask me HOW it works, it was confusing enough fixing the existing page so it would look right on a phone in portrait mode, or on a desktop or a 'slab' in landscape mode, with their varying aspect ratios and screen sizes [yes it works perfectly now!]. And I didn't have to change the style sheet - I embedded 'style' info into the HTML.

            So using this information, indirectly determined from the style sheet setup, EVEN WITH SCRIPT TURNED OFF, it should be possible to 'nuke out' what some of the hardware is that you have on your computer. That doesn't even include font embedding or other potential danger items. There have been vulnerabilities with web fonts in the past, after all.

            it's like a potential side-channel attack. You know, like Meltdown and Spectre.

            seriously isn't the USER-AGENT bad enough in external HTML requests? Only now, it's e-mail spam doing this (in particular, spammed malware). And THOSE are the people who will leverage it.

            icon, because, paranoia (again)

        2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: Yet ANOTHER reason!

          Add in CSS and media queries and you've got a nice little device sniffer that tells the sender exactly what capabilities your device has

          All you need is an MUA that renders external images and you have webbugs. You don't even need CSS for that one. (Or an MUA that respects the onerror event, though I'd hope that one which doesn't render external images also doesn't follow onerror.)

          Of course, MUAs that respect CSS often provide other webbug channels, such as background-image.

          And HTML emails make phishing a lot easier.

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Yet ANOTHER reason!

      I jusat upvoted an @BB post. I feel weird now. Whatever next? Cats living with dogs (been there, doing that), man living in peace with woman (also doing that).

      Mac users liking Windows?

      A step too far methinks.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Yet ANOTHER reason!

        "I jusat upvoted an @BB post"

        Just think of me as a broken clock, being right twice a day.

    3. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Yet ANOTHER reason!

      click-through ads to SEND mail!

      PS: which is one of the (many) reasons why I have my own mail server at home. Means paying for a commercial VDSL line but it's worth the cost.

      Qmail, I think I love you.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yet ANOTHER reason!

      Ah well, it looks as if my bogo filter will be getting another workout.

      At the moment emails that don't have a clear text section in then never see anything other than the junk folder no matter how many offers I can't miss.

  4. JohnFen

    Ends-Means

    Good lord, AMP is such a blight.

    ""I have plenty of concerns about AMP, both technical and ethical," he wrote in a post on news aggregator Lobste.rs. "But when we joined the AMP trial, we immediately saw higher user engagement on our AMP pages."

    In other words, he's making an "ends justify the means" argument. "Sure, AMP is fraught with technical and ethical problems, but it gets us more revenue, so everything's good!"

    AMP in email? Whatever. Those emails will remain invisible to me -- I don't allow HTML rendering or any automatic accessing of any outside data (even from the same place as the email was sent from).

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Alert

      Re: Ends-Means

      "AMP is such a blight"

      And they announce the desire to release this crap, BEFORE any proper patches for Meltdown and Spectre, knowing FULL WELL that javascript proof of concept for these exploits already exists...

      1. DropBear

        Re: Ends-Means

        "BEFORE any proper patches for Meltdown and Spectre"

        That's weird. I was under the distinct impression that the timer resolution making those exploits possible has been not so much reduced but rather obliterated in Palemoon specifically, and that the other browsers also did more or less the same thing already. What exactly are you on about...?

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: Ends-Means

          I was under the distinct impression that the timer resolution making those exploits possible has been not so much reduced but rather obliterated in Palemoon specifically, and that the other browsers also did more or less the same thing already.

          There are many timing channels for Javascript. Eliminating them all is probably infeasible (without crippling Javascript, and users willing to do that are already blocking it). There's ample research on this, and I've posted a link to the best-known paper before, if you want to search for details.

          I don't believe I've seen a Javascript Meltdown exploit. Meltdown is a subset of the Spectre class, but all the Javascript Spectre exploits I've seen have been reading unprivileged data.

        2. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Unhappy

          Re: Ends-Means

          "the timer resolution making those exploits possible has been not so much reduced but rather obliterated in Palemoon specifically, and that the other browsers also did more or less the same thing already"

          or so they say...

          but the thing is, it doesn't eliminate the potential threat. It helps to mitigate what we currently know about the proof of concept algorithm. It is still possible, if you know enough about an OS or an application, to obtain information about it using a side-channel attack, if you repeat the operation sufficiently enough. I have personally used low resolution timers to check performance. if you test 10,000 operations with a timer that has 10msec or even 100msec accuracy, you can still determine how much time was spent doing those operations with reasonable accuracy. you won't be able to time a single operation, but you can time 10,000 of them. And THAT means an exploit will simply have to run LONGER to get a meaningful result, and target what it looks at a bit more carefully.

    2. DNTP

      Re: Ends-Means

      Google claims AMP is fast for mobile platforms.

      Know what's even faster than that? Google simply not permitting advertisers to deliver dynamic content- that no user, in the history of the world, has ever wanted or needed to see- in ads. Guess we'll see that happening, oh, the next never or so.

      1. JetSetJim

        Re: Ends-Means

        >Know what's even faster than that? Google simply not permitting advertisers to deliver dynamic content- that no user, in the history of the world, has ever wanted or needed to see- in ads.

        The user is not the customer, though, the advertisers are. Google will implement features that advertisers want until the consumers walk away.

    3. Just Enough

      Re: Ends-Means

      I think it's time to send an invoice email to the BBC, that turns into a request for Steve Wright to play "The Power Of Love" when opened a second time.

      Email audit trails.. who needs 'em?

    4. Eddy Ito

      Re: Ends-Means

      Maybe it won't be so bad as it looks like identifies itself with a custom tag. Apparently the spec requires either <html ⚡> or <htmp amp> so it should be simple enough to filter crap containing it to /dev/null.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "we immediately saw higher user engagement on our AMP pages"

    Because Google is preferentially boosting AMP results, leveraging the ignorance of its user base to force publishers to embrace lock in on Google's technology, dancing to Google's tune.

    1. Tom 64

      > "Google is preferentially boosting AMP results"

      More likely targeting teenagers who have never seen a PC get owned by email

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: > "Google is preferentially boosting AMP results"

        Or written by teenagers who who have never seen a PC get owned by email.

        1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          Re: > "Google is preferentially boosting AMP results"

          Or written by teenagers who who have never seen a PC get owned by email

          Or, judging by my nephew (mid 20's), never using the email client on his PC or phone, preferring to instead use webmail.

          Which is why I get queries on the (rare) occasion that my webmail server drops out.

    2. Tom 7

      "we immediately saw higher user engagement on our AMP pages"

      Yup - everyone desperately trying to find out how to turn that shit off.

      1. JetSetJim

        Re: how to turn that shit off

        If you have to use Google search, use encrypted.google.com instead - I see no AMP (thanks timecop1818)

        1. Ben Tasker

          Re: how to turn that shit off

          Problem is, Google Search is just one of the routes that takes you to AMP now. If you browse twitter from a phone, they'll now "helpfully" try and direct you to an AMP version when you click a link to an external site.

        2. ThomH

          Re: how to turn that shit off @JetSetJim

          Had I been given that tip earlier, my life might be entirely different. I find AMP to be such a usability nightmare that I switched to Bing. No, really.

          1. bombastic bob Silver badge
            Devil

            Re: how to turn that shit off @JetSetJim

            "I find AMP to be such a usability nightmare that I switched to Bing"

            have you tried duckduckgo.com ?

          2. Ben Tasker

            Re: how to turn that shit off @JetSetJim

            > Had I been given that tip earlier, my life might be entirely different. I find AMP to be such a usability nightmare that I switched to Bing. No, really.

            Yeah, thankfully this news story prompted me to decide I should pull my finger out and actually do something about it (especially as I follow a lot of news links from Twitter). So I've updated my adblock list (to block the AMP JS - particularly amp-ads) and created a Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey script to detect AMP pages and send me to the canonical URL instead: Remove AMP from my browsing

  6. James O'Shea

    feh

    I have Gmail set to deliver mail to my email client via IMAP. My email client is not a web browser. I have turned HTML and such off. I will never see their dancing ads. Should Google try to get around this, by, oh, giving static sending email using IMAP to my email client, I will kill my Gmail accounts.

    1. Not also known as SC

      Re: feh

      Jsu to confirm what you're saying because I think you know more about this than I do.

      This AMP thing only happens (at the moment) if viewed through a web browser which allows javascript to run. If an email client is set to display pages in html, with external content disabled (default for Outlook, Safari etc) would you get the AMP content or not?

      1. James O'Shea

        Re: feh

        That would depend on the email client. Some don't do JavaScript at all, some can do JavaScript but might have problems with AMP. Some can do just about everything that a web browser can do. I avoid the question by just turning off everything which isn't plain text and basic attachments. No viewing pix or PDFs in the mail, I _must_ download the attachment... if I feel like it. It's amazing how often I don't feel like it. Doing things this way means that macros and such cannot run until I download the attachment and open it with the appropriate application,which I do only in certain very specific circumstances. It means that .EXEs are instantly visible. It makes things difficult for phishers and other fraudsters. It also exposes the kind of person who insists on using HTML and JS tricks to tart up email in an. attempt to hide the fact that they're useless gits. All that I see is the plain text, no pix, no colors, no singing, no dancing, just the text. There would be a reason why I hate webmail and decline to use it.

        1. Not also known as SC
          Pint

          Re: feh

          Cheers

  7. vir

    "Some people may find this appealing."

    I find it appalling.

  8. fluffybunnyuk

    mmm more junk that gets blocked. Its not as if we dont have enough junk to block already.

    What is it with companies wanting to use my servers resources for their junk. Its not as if spectre isnt helping with server loads as it is *sarcasm*.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    feature request

    Please, Google, once you have got this AMP malarky running smoothly in Gmail, can you roll out ActiveX and Flash in email too? In fact, why not make native code run as well, straight over email, it would be super neat. Even greater would be if we didn't have to click on anything before it ran either, that's such a drag.

    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: feature request

      That is some quality sarcasm! Nice!!

    2. Christian Berger

      Re: feature request

      "In fact, why not make native code run as well, straight over email, it would be super neat."

      Outlook used to have that feature, you could embed a sound file in your mail which would then be saved to disk and played... even if it had the extension .exe. (Explanation: The Windows API-Call to play a sound internally maps to the API-call to execute a program. So you could convince Outlook that it's a sound via the MIME-Type, but effectively you could send a native program.)

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: feature request

        Which most of us considered a gaping security hole of the "What the FUCK were they thinking?!?" class, not a feature.

      2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: feature request

        Outlook used

        Outlook is still (quite clearly) the end result of marketing triumphing over IT. Much like Windows itself.

      3. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: feature request

        "Outlook used to have that feature" [followed by the description of a horrible/lame exploit]

        Yeah, MS Outlook aka "Virus Outbreak".

        Is it any better decades later from their first release in Office '95? Probably not...

    3. nagyeger

      Re: feature request

      I remember, back in the 90s, we all said "ignore the scare-mail chain-letters, you can't get a virus just from opening email."

      Because it's plain text.

      mutt is (this) man's best friend

    4. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: feature request

      you deserve more upvotes, but the counter currently reads '42'

  10. Martin Summers Silver badge

    AMP is causing higher user engagement presumably because you can't turn the sodding thing off in search results. I have no choice but to click on an AMP page most of the time these days because the regular page has been hidden somewhere. I always click on the link button at the top to open the page on the publishers site in the vain hope that others are doing it immediately and it shows up in their stats somehow.

    1. JohnFen

      AMP pages from the browser require the use of the "AMP viewer" to see -- which is a bit of Javascrript. Disable Javascript or use something like NoScript and you won't get the AMP pages anymore -- at worst, you'll be immediately redirected to the canonical page.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It'll soon be time for many of us to start up our own web and email servers. I'm sure many on this forum already have their own running. Maybe computer magazines will make a comeback as a place to get IPs for other sites. No goog involved, at all.

      1. Boothy

        I switched to duckduckgo for search and all the AMP stuff just vanished.

        AMP was basically the last straw for me with Google search.

  11. Tom 64
    Windows

    You won't ever be able to convince me...

    ... that running any kind of code in an email isn't a horrible security risk.

    I'll stick with plain text thank you.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Scripts auto running in email... what could go wrong?

    Please don’t use FLASHY in a sentence around IT people...

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Facepalm

      Flashy you say? As Google lead so El Reg should follow. Can we have the blink tag enabled in comments please? Pretty please... You know it makes sense!

      Do you think that marketing departments the world over are nostalgic for Geocities? As it seems many companies are trying to turn their sites into Geocities with extra pictures.

      MY EYES!!!!!

  13. jake Silver badge

    One more reason to shun google.

    Works for me, anyway.

    Sometimes balkanization is a good idea. My Internet, and google's internet.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    AMP- 'not a security hole from a business perspective'

    Wrote to a national newspaper warning them that AMP easily lets users bypass their whole Paywall. (Disable-JS-Tweak-URL / View-Source within Browser etc). Their response... Its a deliberate feature of AMP and not a security hole from a business perspective. WTF, can someone explain that?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: AMP- 'not a security hole from a business perspective'

      When AMP was launched very high level people in Google - Sundar and Eric - went round the large newspapers CEOs, who had at this point mostly rejected AMP as harmful to their business, at the Davos summit. They pointed out that papers adopting AMP would be candidates for a significant share of the €150 million funding under the Google Digital News Initiative. They also pointed out that AMP pages, being faster, would get promoted in Google search above those that didn't adopt. There were also some concessions around sharing users data to make it less of a closed Google option.

      That combination of carrot and stick changed the minds of the CEOs.

  15. Oengus

    Is this really something to crow about?

    Malte Ubl, engineering lead for AMP at Google, said over 31 million domains have created 5 million AMP pages since the technology debuted in early 2016.

    31 million domains create 5 million pages that means that 5 out of 6 domains didn't produce an AMP page meaning only 16% take up at best (assuming 1 page per domain).

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So THAT explains it!

    I wondered what the heck had happened at the BBC this last year or so.. this requiring a sign-in malarkey for every durned thing, I contacted the Beeb to ask why they were requiring a login in order for folks to use iPlayer when they hadn't for years, and they deliberately ignored my point and woffled on about 'personalisation' etc. SoI asked why one shouldn't be able to use iplayer exactly as before (ie: without signing in) if one doesnt want to have a 'personalised' experience, and they ignored that too. And I see that now teh buggers are requiring a login for the weather page if you want it to remember more than one location. And no response whatsoever to my pointing out that any large database will inevitably leak and/or get hacked.

    Well, sod that - so I'm going TV-licence free, havent watched TV in months, and can't use iplayer now anyway ('cause I refuse to set up an account). But at least now I know what's happened at the Beeb - Aunty has been swept off her feet by a large supply of chocolates and is hooking up with a paramour that'll break her heart whenever Google wishes.

    Sigh. This future world's more shite than I'd've expected back in proper time. Can I go back to my own timeline now, please? :-}

    (exit stage left to the proper universe, whilst old biddy mutter-grumbling)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So THAT explains it!

      And I see that now teh buggers are requiring a login for the weather page if you want it to remember more than one location.

      But why would anybody now want to use the BBC weather pages? They've made such a total fucking disaster with the recent redesign (and the BBC weather app) that there's far better alternative almost anywhere else.

      This is the problem with the BBC right through - they are so busy "knowing best" that they simply don't see the world from licence-fee payers' perspective. And that's at a UI level, a broadcast content level, at a political & values level, and at a technology level.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So THAT explains it!

        But why would anybody now want to use the BBC weather pages? They've made such a total fucking disaster with the recent redesign (and the BBC weather app) that there's far better alternative almost anywhere else.

        I'd recommend Metcheck.

      2. MJI Silver badge

        Re: So THAT explains it!

        The TV ones now have HUGE labels blocking most of the screen.

        So now I use online at the Met Office

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: So THAT explains it!

          "The TV ones now have HUGE labels blocking most of the screen.

          So now I use online at the Met Office"

          Most of the redesign is because the Met Office contract, despite being extended a while, has now ended and Meteo provide the weather data and forecasts

          1. MJI Silver badge

            Re: So THAT explains it!

            Poor graphics though

      3. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: So THAT explains it!

        as long as I can "sign in" with a 10minutemail.com e-mail address, it mitigates some of the problem (but not all) of a typical "sign up to view content" identity-slurping site.

        [it's not like they don't already know my IP address, USER-AGENT string, and what time of day I'm hitting their web site at]

      4. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: So THAT explains it!

        "But why would anybody now want to use the BBC weather pages? They've made such a total fucking disaster with the recent redesign "

        IMHO, the last redesign was the one that broke the weather. A national view or a local, 20 or so mile radius was useless to me. I drive a lot. Most days at least 50 miles from home, sometimes as much as 250. I like being able to zoom in and out and see what the weather is likely to be doing at home, where I'm going and the bits in-between. It also means I don't need multiple "favourites" so don't need an account.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: So THAT explains it!

      If you don't want to sign on use Kodi with the iPlayer WWW add-on.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So THAT explains it!

      I think the BBC got so fed up of the criticism that they got for doing a good job and dominating news, sport and weather that they just decided to give up. And then there was that whole "we've got loads of video, let's force it on people whether they want it or not" redesign.

      Stupid ideas like introducing hot desking, moving to Salford and equal pay for the useless and the competent didn't help retain the good staff.

      Most of the people who did the good work have gone now and headed over to News International.

  17. Jamesit

    Google: fsck off. This is a really bad idea.

  18. JWLong

    Fuck Off Google

    AMP=Ain't My Program

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The world, it seems...

    ...has become a battleground where advertisers, media men, political propagandists and (other) criminals vie to take over my communication space to try and sell me solutions that don't work, to problems I don't have, for money I haven't got, either.

    And the real issues remain completely unaddressed.

    Whatever happened to working, for a living?

    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: The world, it seems...

      Whatever happened to working, for a living?

      Someone developed IT?

      (My common comment, when confronted with the lastest bit of idiocy, is to mutter to myself "well, it beats working for a living..")

  20. Wibble

    Think of the adults...!

    Why is everything about the children these days? Animated talking turds, instagram filters...

    It's like the world doesn't give a shit any longer. Please, WALL-E isn't an insightful documentary.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Think of the adults...!

      >> Animated talking turds

      The children were too young to vote for it.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Think of the adults...!

        And the supposed adults thought it was such a good idea, they elected one PotUS as well. I weep for my country ...

  21. Joe Werner Silver badge

    html was already bad enough

    Seriously, why do you need html in email? Why do you need this carp? Why do the "modern" email programs have problems with the correct way of quoting the message you reply to? I usually do not top-quote, which leads to messages being shown as blank...

    I want elm back ;p (on the cell phones of my colleagues)

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: html was already bad enough

      "I usually do not top-quote"

      you meant top-POST, right? top-quoting is what I just did. top-POSTing (putting your reply BEFORE the quote) deserves scorn and ridicule.

  22. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    some people may find this appealing

    But not it seems most of the commentators here.

    I count myself in the 'emails should only contain ascii - not formatted text, not html, and certainly not animations'. But then, I am very old and probably don't understand what the young'ns want from their advertisers, er, correspondents.

    1. alain williams Silver badge

      Re: some people may find this appealing

      I count myself in the 'emails should only contain ascii - not formatted text, not html, and certainly not animations'.

      Exactly. One of the motivations for AMP in email is, apparently, ''load faster, particularly on resource-constrained, bandwidth-limited mobile devices''. So how about junking all the HTML and CSS - send just plain text.

      Email is a message, I read it for the information that it contains, I am not interested in fonts or pretty colours. I want to be able to store it on my PC & I certainly don't want it to show me something different the next time that I look at it.

      1. quxinot

        Re: some people may find this appealing

        To be fair, a very easy and comfortable way to figure out what an unsolicited email is like is to look at what's in it as far as flash, html, and such.

        if there's any, it's crap.

        If it's text, it might be important.

        1. DropBear

          Re: some people may find this appealing

          To be fair, even traditional mail included occasionally things that weren't strictly letters - postcards, illustrated catalogues etc. Much of that may have always been spam to many, but not to all - believe it or not, I often find occasional full-graphic "now on sale" ad-mails from some of the specialized sites I actually shop at actually rather useful (ie. random stuff from Amazon: not useful - shop selling only books and DVDs or RC hobby parts: potentially useful). Of course, this is NOT to endorse AMP in any sense, just to be clear, and I fully support anyone's choice who wants nothing but text - I'd just like to counterbalance it by pointing out that for at least some of us "text only (not even HTML)" is not one but several bridges too far.

    2. MJI Silver badge

      Re: some people may find this appalling

      Spelling corrected.

    3. myhandler

      Re: some people may find this appealing

      Grow up - if you exclude style formatting you can't view tabular data nicely for one - design and layout are there to make things easier to read and comprehend.

      Though I agree that's all that HMTL email should allow.

      Anyway Microsoft Outlook won't adopt any of this for at least 20 years.

      1. Tom 7

        Re: some people may find this appealing

        @myhandler - monospace is fine for tabulating. In fact its a lot better than shit HTML, and far better than shit HTML with shit CSS,

        1. Wensleydale Cheese

          Re: some people may find this appealing

          "monospace is fine for tabulating. In fact its a lot better than shit HTML"

          Monospace has the further advantage that where "111.11" is displayed above "888.88", the individual digits display in the correct places.

          Proportional fonts really aren't very good for displaying lists of more than one part or account number.

      2. JohnFen

        Re: some people may find this appealing

        " if you exclude style formatting you can't view tabular data nicely for one"

        If you want to send actual documents where this sort of thing is important, then attach a such a document. It's more useful that way anyhow, as people can view and manipulate it in an appropriate application rather than half-assing it in HTML. Don't pollute email with this crap.

  23. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    AMP = cryptomining / cryptolocking

    go north and get lost. Don't want it.

    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      go north and get lost

      Oi! Don't pollute Canada/The Arctic (little perceivable difference I'm told. The main difference being the colour of the coat of the bear that's about to eat your head..).

  24. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    Nice to be part of a community

    I'm another oldie who uses a simple (no HTML) newsreader. It makes for a peaceful life!

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Nice to be part of a community

      simple/no-HTML newsreader should be a requirement.

      I regularly ridicule people who insist on posting HTML content to USENET. One time I carefully constructed a USENET post [took some actual time] that had radically different content for the plain-text and HTML versions, basically ridiculing the asshat that thought HTML posts to USENET were so awesome. [this person also loves Win-10-nic, so there you go].

  25. MJI Silver badge

    What will happen?

    When downloaded by Thunderbird / Outlook Express / Email client of choice?

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: What will happen?

      Well, nothing. Not if you're using a properly configured MTA, anyway.

    2. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

      Re: What will happen?

      IIRC you can set it to display text only, even if the email is HTML.

      Or, better still, use PINE in CLI mode.

  26. Muscleguy

    Rinse, repeat

    My initial motivation for installing an adblocker on my browser, followed by a script manager was those flash ads which would scroll across the screen with video and sound as soon as you scrolled down the page. El Reg was actually one of the worst offenders.

    Any singing, dancing email messages will get AMP turned off and serious consideration given to ending email privileges for certain merchants of my acquaintance.

    I recently bought a cheep and cheerful pair of shoes from a bricks and mortar shop and got a scratch card with it which revealed a code, put it in at shoe emporium dotcom. To complete this process there was a button to confirm conditions acceptance AND membership of their email list, naughty, naughty. I unsubscribed at first opportunity and left them admonishment on their web page.

    Bad behaviour is common, more common than it should be. It would seem the risk of being caught is low and the sanctions not worrying enough.

    1. Ben Tasker

      Re: Rinse, repeat

      > Any singing, dancing email messages will get AMP turned off

      What, based on AMP for Web, gives you any inclinatiom there's going to be an option to disable this heap o' shite?

      Plenty of 'users' have asked for a way to globally opt out of AMP. It's not been forthcoming.

      They're almost certainly going to go out of their way to shove this heap as far down our throats as possible.

      About the best you'll be able to do is reply to say you can't read their email and could they please resend as plain text. Almost back to the days of eejits sending everything as a word attachment.

      1. JohnFen

        Re: Rinse, repeat

        "What, based on AMP for Web, gives you any inclinatiom there's going to be an option to disable this heap o' shite?"

        It requires Javascript, so you can always disable it by disabling Javascript.

  27. Baldrickk

    I hate AMP

    Having pages actually laid out nicely for mobile consumption is nice, but it didn't need AMP to happen.

    Especially if you visit an AMP page in Chrome on Android, the page takes over your browser... DO NOT WANT.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: I hate AMP

      "Having pages actually laid out nicely for mobile consumption is nice, but it didn't need AMP to happen."

      true, some careful effort on the part of the one(s) doing the web design can make this happen. been there, did that for customer web page.

    2. JohnFen

      Re: I hate AMP

      "Having pages actually laid out nicely for mobile consumption is nice"

      In theory, sure. In practice, I rarely see it done in a way that doesn't degrade the usefulness of the page. In the past, I'd been able to work around this by spoofing the browser ID to tell the server I'm using a desktop -- but with the increasing use of "responsive" web design, this has lost much of its effectiveness. So now, I don't browse the web on mobile devices unless there's a huge immediate need to do so.

  28. steelpillow Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Oh dear, M'Lud

    "So the plaintiff claims the abused sent her a lewd video with her face edited into a sex act, along with a blackmail demand for sex or $10,000 to delete the file?"

    "Yes, m'Lud."

    "But when you, the plaintiff's attorney, opened the AMP email, the video showed only a dancing cat?"

    "Yes, m'Lud"

    "May I?" [His Lordship reaches for the smartphone]

    >tap< >swipe< >tappity<

    "Ah, here we are... Now it's trying to sell me a cheap holiday. Is this all the evidence you have?"

    " . "

  29. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Coat

    The only AMP I have have allowed into my house recently

    is my son's new Marshall

    (not big in size, but a huge sound)

    I'll get me coat

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: The only AMP I have have allowed into my house recently

      "not big in size, but a huge sound"

      especially when turned up to 11. it's 1 more than 10!

      (I've only got Peavey amps and ones I've built...)

  30. WibbleMe

    Dancing Chicken

    25 years ago a had to submit an IT project (as a website) to two different lectures for marking, the one of the Computer Science School insisted that text uses the "blink" function or I would fail and the one from "Digital Art and Design" department instead that I would fail if I used "Blink".

    But since we keep seeing articles about PC's being vulnerable malicious code in in.PGN and.JPG then we can assume all our emails will have Bitcoin mining mail ware on them from now on in the form of a dancing chicken.

  31. israel_hands

    I'm with the rest of you. I use Amazon workmail for my personal (and my family's) accounts, through my own domain and the web-interface disables anything but plain-text by default. Makes it easier to weed out shit I'm not interested in, if the message looks garbled with loads of tags visible it generally gets junked.

    I've also set up my Outlook client for work to send/receive in plain-text only, despite occasionally getting stick from the boss for not slapping the massive "branding" images and various bullshit social media links in my signature. I just point out that HTML e-mails are a security risk and I count disabling that shit under the category of "being a good neighbour".

  32. plingwoo

    Windows 95 all over again.

  33. Rimpel

    El reg ads

    I have many rules set up to block parts of this site to make it tolerable for me, such as the masthead, that annoying sticky menu I've never used, all images (yes really), that right hand column, the social buttons etc. To have ublock origin do this I can't whitelist the site so the ads get blocked too.

    This has been asked before but not answered: How much revenue do you make if I read roughly a third of the articles you publish and never click on an ad? I'd probably be happy to donate that amount to you and continue reading the site as I want to.

  34. kain preacher

    Up next tabs in your email

  35. Smoking Man

    Pls. Switch off your Adblocker

    in order to read the mails sent to you today (*).

    (*) To see the messages you missed yesterday, pls. upgrade to our professional mailing solution for just 4.99/month.

  36. herman

    Better spam filters

    The new craptags will make it much easier and reliable to filter out email spam.

  37. EveryTime

    This is gonna be so frickking cool!!!

    I can't wait for animated ads fight to overlay my already-spam advertising email!!

    And five different auto-play sound tracks starting at once!

  38. Agamemnon

    *Sniffs* I read my EMail in (Al)pine <truly>. WOrks on my phone pretty well too. Screw `em.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    set PATH=Hell in a handbasket;%PATH%

    Crazy

    :Top

    for %i=Javascript, Java, ActiveX, Dcom, "Code in Emails", Cocane, Uranium, "other really dangerous things"

    do Echo Years ago they said don't use %i because it can trash your system, then the next big thing came out.

    When computers came out I said to myself it would be interesting to know how they worked, I learnt assembly thru MS debug,write batch files, People said they would save paper and be good for us.

    Now I look at articles about the great big piles of mobile phones and other ewaste, I also see Australia cannot recycle it's paper glass and metal,

    set PATH=Hell in a handbasket;%PATH%

    Now I just observe the mess, wondering how we got to this point.

    :Exit

  40. J. Cook Silver badge
    Mushroom

    NO. Just NO NO NO NO NO.

    We have *quite* enough problems at [RedactedCo] with the _normal_ trickle that manages to get past the spam filters. I really don't have enough bandwidth to write a content filter that drops anything AMP enabled, but sure as death and taxes, I'll do it if it keeps my mail servers from getting that much more larded up.

    And before I read the article, I thought it was talking about Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) which is already a feature on their security appliances....

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