Hotmail Blocks Gmail Emails (and Invites)

bonhomme_de_neige writes "Emails and invitations sent to Hotmail from Gmail accounts do not bounce, but nor do they arrive in the recipient's Inbox - they vanish mysteriously into the aether. Joel Johnson writes in his Gizmodo weblog that invitations he sent to a Hotmail address bounced (this even received coverage from ZDNet). Search Engine Roundtable writes that several ISPs are blocking Gmail. It's already well-documented that Yahoo moves Gmail invites into the Bulk Mail folder. I've personally confirmed the Hotmail and Yahoo blocking." Please note: I've not been able to verify this one way or another.

Stunning

Mega-corporations don't play nice? Really? I'm absolutely flabbergasted!

Re:Stunning

Mega-corporations don't play nice? Really? I'm absolutely flabbergasted!

An email service blocking emails from a competing email service is surprising. Has this ever happened before? Is this even legal?

Re:Stunning

I don't know if it's legal, but it's certainly unethical.

I don't understand why ISPs would block gmail mail anyway. (I understand the invites, though.)

Re:Stunning

I don't understand why ISPs would block gmail mail anyway. (I understand the invites, though.)

Well, the articles mentions that some email providers are blocking GMail due to privacy concerns. Seems like a bunch of hogwash to me.

Re:Stunning

How does gmail's indexing of email stored on gmail servers affect mail coming in to an ISP? "Privacy" my arse. I trust google to tread my data properly more than I do most ISPs anyway. :)

Privacy - yeah right

As if hotmail and yahoo are in any position to point the finger at anyone for privacy issues!

WHAT IS A GMAIL INVITE?

Sorry, but I seem to be on the trailing edge of technology today. What is this invite stuff? Seems I don't get invited to nothing anymore!

Re:WHAT IS A GMAIL INVITE?

I would like an invite, send it to nNOSPAMeNOSPAMmREMOVEoTAKE-OUTsDON'T-TYPE-THIS-PAR ToI-LIKE-CHEESEmFISHeHEADSn AT yTAKE-ME-OUTahoTO-THE-BALLGAMEo.com

------
Note, taking out the bullshit won't get a real email address.

Re:Stunning

Privacy concerns? That's such hogwash. GMail's server reads your email and offers syntactical ads. If it didn't offer the ads, GMail's server would still read your email. So would ever server between the sender AND GMail. Machines read your email all the time. If they didn't, you wouldn't be able to get it. You certainly wouldn't be able to have it checked for spam. Thinking your message is "private" just because the machines don't explicitly tell you they read it is very naive.

Methinks ISPs are using "Privacy Concerns" as a way of keeping customers from leaving their quickly aging service. "Hey look, bearded technology pundits with nothing better to do are upset about ads in a radical new free email service. They're waving the privacy flag. We can wave the same flag and lock people in to viewing our contextually inaccurate ads a little bit longer!"

Re:Stunning

What amuses me about all of this is that ISPs and stupid technology writers keep waving that flag, but it's not like Google is trying to be underhanded about how the service works. They seem to make it pretty clear what's going to happen when you sign up.

Essentially, anyone who blocks Gmail invites would be saying "well, I understand that you agreed to what Google offered, but I feel as though I have more say in your decisions, so I'm rescinding your approval and issuing a denial on your behalf". How is THAT not an abuse of privacy? If they really felt that their customers' privacy was at risk, why wouldn't they just offer a warning? Blocking the e-mails is essentially saying that you have more say in your customer's decisions than they do online, PLUS it indicates that you were watching their mail in the first place!

Do you I smell a pile of boving excrement wafting on the breeze from the direction of a few dirty ISPs and freemail providers?

Re:Stunning

Because people should never need to switch ISP's, colleges, or jobs. I know when I pick a college, I'm there for the rest of my life.

Re:Stunning

unless your ISP is SBC, then you get a Yahoo! account (even though its @sbcglobal.net).

Re:Stunning

Everyone has a real e-mail account available to them if they just pay enough attention to know who's offering it (real ISP, college, job) and learn how to set up a real e-mail client. Five minutes.

Real ISPs come and go, you are not in college forever, and you dont keep the same job forever. However, you CAN keep one of these "second-rate" email addresses indefinitely. I have had my yahoo account for years, while friends and colleagues change their "real" email accounts year after year, mine has always been the same. I have lost touch with many people because they changed email addresses and never told anyone.

Thanks for the short-sighted answer.

Re:Stunning

The motto: huzzah for email forwarding.

You get all the advantages of a real email address without the changiness.

Re:Stunning

Actually, the real solution is to take $50 or so and invest in your own domain name and domain based email hosting with a reputable company. By controlling the DOMAIN your email goes to, you have complete control over your email address. If your company goes under, you can move to another one in about 2 days. If your domain provider goes under, you can move your Domain to a new one in about a week. And best of all, you can offer free email accounts to all of your friends and family...free email accounts that you can vouch for, that don't pop up ads everywhere, and that you can control who reads/knows about their existance.

I started my hosting company as a cooperative just so I could get rid of my favorite email "alias," [e-mail], which the company providing the alias had sold to spammers when I told them no, I won't give you $10 a month to forward my fucking email with ads at the bottom. Incidentally, I lost a job in 2001 because the hiring staff sent an email to [e-mail] and I had already dropped that account -- there was too much spam to sort through.

Re:Stunning

Or pay $12 a year for pobox.com redirection and spam filtering. No ads, and you can send the mail to whatever real e-mail account you like, and change it at a moment's notice (unlike personal domains).

Re:Stunning

I have both a Yahoo and Hotmail account...someone email me an invite and I'll verify this post ;)

[e-mail]
[e-mail]

-M

Re:Stunning

Sweet! They both came through, the one sent to Yahoo was stuck in my Bulk folder, and the one to Hotmail was in my inbox (I use the "enhanced" junk mail filtering). This post is BUSTED. -Mike

Re:Stunning

hmm... no gmail account for you, but I'm willing to bet some spam will be on its way...

Re:Stunning

Everyone has a real e-mail account available to them if they just pay enough attention to know who's offering it (real ISP, college, job) and learn how to set up a real e-mail client. Five minutes.

But paid-for doesn't always mean better. I'm on NTL, and in the last year the email service has become unuseable (emails sometimes take months to arrive, or sometimes disappear altogether; sometimes connecting to POP or SMTP is very difficult). Paid-for doesn't mean you have more of a position to complain, when your complaints are completely ignored. Whilst gmail blocking seems to be restricted to free email accounts, it is not inconceivable that paid for ISPs may try dirty tactics.

Switching to a free email account (that I still use a "real email client" for) took five minutes, but switching entirely to a new cable ISP would take far longer.

Re:Stunning

OK, fair enough. Yahoo etc are not the greatest.
BUT I set up my yahoo account 10 years ago, and yes I had a college account, then I left college, had a differant work account, back to college, diff account, Job, diff account, and am now working as a postdoc with a differant account.
My point is I still have the same yahoo account I had when I was 17. I used it in South America, in Germany, in the Port Authority in NYC, Stansted Airport and so on. So, if someone that i met 7 years ago wants to drop me a mail, and doesnt have my work/uni address, they use yahoo. (And I tell them to use my work address from then on.) But the contact is made. And, therefore they cannot be described as "second-rate e-mail services", because when you are in the back ends of the Andes they are the only thing available, and are pretty first rate in those instances. They are a differant type of account, and are useful.
And I take offence at hotmail or anyone censoring my mails.

Re:Stunning

Well not really! This is like the "No Solicitors" sign you see everywhere nowdays. I guess it's part of their right to block invitations, but blocking "customer service" because of ethnicity or origin that's unethical!

Yes, but your city council does not put the "No Solicitors" sign on your door for you, and give you no option to remove it if you happen to enjoy solicitors.

Re:Stunning

You mean a company offering its services for free is putting restrictions on said services? *Gasp* Can 1984 be far behind? Surely this is the result of the eeeevil George W. Bush and his Patriot Act. Serioulsy, though. These companies are offering a free service. There's nothing unethical or illegal about making said service crappier. Even if you were paying for it, they've still got license to do whatever they want with the service (unless of course the TOS say that the TOS are never going to change...) Isn't this just like consoles all being proprietary, so that not just anyone can make games fro them?

Re:Stunning

I sent an invite to someone two days ago, and he still hasn't gotten it.

I can vouch that this is certainly questionable.

Re:Stunning

I use Hotmail, a friend of mine uses gmail. I've not had any problems getting his mails

Actually - it happened in this order. Test email sent to Hotmail, did not arrive. Story submitted to Slashdot. Email arrived in Hotmail account several hours later (after other emails I sent from my other accounts _after_ the one from gmail - which arrived almost instantly). I've read several reports of Hotmail both bouncing and vanishing Gmail email - I'm sure if you hunt around you can find even more. It may be that they are changing their behaviour as they realise it'd going to do them more harm then good.

As for the Yahoo one, that is definitely true.

Hotmail generally sucking

I've actually had a lot of issues with hotmail in the last... 3-6 months? Email bounce with server errors (accounts aren't full so that's not the problem), or there's a lengthy delay between sending the email and it actually being received.

So, this may not be so much indicative of a problem with hotmail and gmail as it is hotmail in general. Possibly they're lagged in processing the some bazillion spams that must pass through there, anyone have any stats on how much spam passes through hotmail daily?

Re:Stunning

Overgeneralization has made it into /. stories before, or have you not been around that long? If you simply RTFA, you'll see that it's mainly just the invites that have gone missing.

Unable to verify...

Please note: I've not been able to verify this one way or another.

But I won't let that stop me from posting it! ;)

Re:Unable to verify...

But this was such a well researched posting. I like how it contradicts itself:
Emails and invitations sent to Hotmail from Gmail accounts do not bounce...invitations he sent to a Hotmail address bounced

Re:Unable to verify...

I received a Gmail invite through my hotmail account just yesterday without any problems.

Re:Unable to verify...

For what it's worth, I received a Gmail invite through my Hotmail account on Friday without any problems.

MS & Google

I would expect this from Microsoft. They can blame the spam filters, to try and save face, but the simple fact is, they are simply taking a page from their own rulebook; they don't want to lose advertising revenue from people switching to Gmail, so they are breaking the law and interfering with email. If Microsoft had successfully bought Google to trash it [theinquirer.net], Gmail would not have existed at all. For those of you just tuning in, Hotmail is owned and operated by Microsoft, after they bought the service [com.com] in 1998. I was a Hotmail member prior to Microsoft being involved and the service has declined significantly since the old days. Although many of the features have improved since then, the bulk of the Hotmail service is becoming increasingly unreliable for email that just "has to get there".

In other news, we've got lots of Gmail invites for military folks here [gmailforthetroops.com], so if you want Gmail for large files and you are a soldier, or if you want to donate your invites to soldiers, check us out. This is not just for American military, but any democratic military, such as Canada or the UK.

Well gee, it works fine for me....

I got an invite from my buddy, he even sent it to me using his gmail address. me thinks this story is FUD.

Re:Well gee, it works fine for me....

Same here. A gmail invite sent to google arrived quite happily in my inbox, and I have hotmail's spam filter set to high. Test emails sent from my gmail account to hotmail did arrive.

But hey, lets not let the facts get in way of a knee jerk reaction <g>

Re:MS & Google

Either that or the Gmail invite reads like:

LIMITED TIME OFFER!

NATURAL ENHANCEMENT!

ABOUT YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT

FREE FREE FREE FREE

SIGN UP NOW!

http://gmail.com

For more info, I send you this file in order to have your advice.

Re:MS & Google

Although many of the features have improved since then, the bulk of the Hotmail service is becoming increasingly unreliable for email that just "has to get there".

If it "just has to get there", you wouldn't be using email in the first place. But even if you are using email, why on earth would you be using Hotmail? If it's that important, you should be using your own SMTP server over which you have control. Instead, you're relying on a third party, that you're not paying, and with whom you have no service level agreement. Not a smart move for data you care about...

your own SMTP server? ha!

I tried that. Yes, I have my own SMTP server. It was nice, fast, and super reliable until AOL/Comcast/Time Warner/pretty much everyone began blocking email from everyone except megacorp SMTP servers.