[geeks] Crackpot project, need some guidance

[Mouse]

>> [I was going to send this offlist, but then I read the headers and
>> noticed you send through google and thus can't write me directly.]
> Might I ask why you don't accept mail from google?

You might indeed.  I'll even tell you.

Most briefly, they are egregiously antisocial.

This started back when they first introduced Gmail.  Gmail's webmail
interface conceals the actual client IP, putting an RFC1918-private IP
in the headers instead.  This was pointed out to them by multiple
people on a relatively private list I was on, back before they went
public with it, and they chose to bull ahead anyway.  So I blocked all
mail exhibiting that particular spoor.  (There are some netblocks I
don't want any webamil from, ever.  Gmail was designed such that the
only way I could do that is to, among other things, refuse all Gmail
webmail.  So I did.)

What really tore it with me was when they started outright spamming me.

I was forcibly subscribed - ie, without even telling me, much less
asking me - to four Google Groups.  One (I think two, but I'm sure at
least one) of them was even in an alphabet, never mind language, I
can't read.

I complained (to their abuse.net-registered abuse-handling address).
Three times.  At one-business-day intervals.  It made no difference I
could detect.

I looked at the mail and noticed it all had a header in common.  So I
blocked anything with that header.

Months passed.

Then two spams from one of the lists made it through into my mailbox.
They had changed the header I was blocking on.  I investigated and
found that they had not bounce-processed me off the lists, despite
months of 100% rejections of multiple messages a day.

So.  I asked myself, are google spammers?

- They force-subscribed me to lists.
- They ignored my complaints.
- They have no working bounce processing.
- They morphed so as to evade my blocks.

_I_ sure have trouble seeing any difference.  I ARranged for anything
from google.com to get a 5xx "greeting" banner from me.

Months after the blanket block against Google went up, I checked.  They
were still pounding on my door, dozens of attempts a day.  They *still*
had no working bounce processing.  That alone would be enough for me to
say they should get off the net until they fix their software.

> A large number of people are hosting their domains with Google Apps,
> including many businesses and non-profit orgs.  [...]

So what?  This amounts to "they're big, so you should wave off their
offenses".

No.

Being big means they should be held to _stricter_ standards than small
players.  They have no excuse.  They should be setting an example
for everyone else; instead, they're a better example of how to do email
wrong.  To return to the first offense above, I know it's hard to get
the client IP right when you've got a farm of load-balancers larger
than most people's entire network.  But Google has solved much harder
problems; if they cared to bother, they could solve that one.  But they
apparently can't be bothered, preferring instead to inflict the costs
of their laziness on the rest of the net.

They have non-spammer users?  When someone like Richter does that, we
call it "human shields" and (rightly, IMO) consider it a compounding
offense.  That's exactly what I consider it in Google's case.

> [...various Google customers...]  They're all beyond the scope of
> people you care to receive email from?  You don't even know who they
> are.

I have nothing against receiving mail from them.  Just not through
Google.  Let them use a civilized provider and I'm fine with them.

Yes, I'm sure it's cheaper, in the immediate term, to use Google.  Most
resources return the greatest immediate-term return when ruthlessly
exploited into the ground, and the Internet is no different.  Google is
using you as a human shield.  You are helping them "too big to block"
their way out of the conesequences of their antisocial behaviour (well,
most of; there's me and probably a few other people who won't put up
with it, but I don't flatter myself Google has even noticed us).
Naturally they're going to charge you less - the _want_ you there.

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