Comments on: Gmail Still Isn't Perfect, Even with Mail Fetcher

By: Carla

Carla — Mon, 31 May 2010 14:57:08 +0000

I really hate the 'on behalf of' thing, it's a reason why I can't use this feature that seemed so handy. I am using gmail for my businessmail and for my private mail. When i purchase something privately, or email to somebody privately, do they need to what business I am? The reason I added my private gmail addy into my business gmail was to be able to send email from my private addy WITHOUT giving away my business addy. But that's now all messed up cause of the 'on behalf of' thing.

By: Turn Gmail into Your Social Brain « Web Worker Daily

Turn Gmail into Your Social Brain « Web Worker Daily — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:32:14 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Eddie

Eddie — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 10:44:35 +0000

Hi! Nice site!

By: Jordan

Jordan — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 14:55:51 +0000

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.

By: What is Gmail?

What is Gmail? — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 22:02:59 +0000

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.

By: brentashley » Blog Archive » GMail on Path to Perfection

brentashley » Blog Archive » GMail on Path to Perfection — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:55:23 +0000

[...] 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. [...]

By: Nasir

Nasir — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 07:37:01 +0000

It was interesting to read this blog.

By: ryan

ryan — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 21:56:55 +0000

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.

By: Oskar Syahbana

Oskar Syahbana — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:04:39 +0000

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 :)

By: Clint

Clint — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:13:20 +0000

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.

By: shelbycockrell

shelbycockrell — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:01:44 +0000

Gmail is my favorite mail, hands down. I like te search feature. And hey, I like your blog. It was interesting to read!

By: Joshua Bloom

Joshua Bloom — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:06:46 +0000

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

By: Cote'

Cote' — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:27:40 +0000

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.

By: Nasir

Nasir — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 08:06:26 +0000

Its a great feature added by google.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 01:20:40 +0000

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.

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 19:58:32 +0000

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.