Hotmail Blocking Gmail?

[Jt0323]

Are Hotmail And Yahoo! Blocking Gmail Invites?

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...=117719#117719

Joel Johnson created a buzz by reporting that some Gmail invites and emails aren't getting through to Hotmail users. Several reports also claim the emails aren't getting through Yahoo! Mail filters.

Have you noticed any problems sending Gmail invites? Share your experiences at WebProWorld.

Paul Thurrett of WinnetMag reports Hotmail, which is owned by Microsoft, plans to increase its email storage to compete with the 1 Gigabite of space Google offers through its new Gmail service.

"Hotmail [may] be blocking the Gmail invitations," Johnson, editor of Gizmodo, announced after a Gmail invite he'd attempted to send to a Hotmail account bounced.

Alex Nobert, a reader of Johnson's blog, also reported similar problems sending invites to Hotmail from Orkut, Google's online community. "Orkut responded that they had to work out an arrangement with Hotmail," Nobert said. "About a month later several old invites arrived at Hotmail addresses. I suspect it has to do with an unknown source domain generating too many emails to Hotmail accounts in a short span and being picked up by Hotmail spam filters."

They aren't the only ones reporting problems. WebmasterWorld member Robert Skelton reported his ISP is blocking Gmail emails "due to potential privacy and confidentiallity considerations."

Google has been widely criticized for scanning emails, which draws up privacy concerns although users agree to Gmail's terms and conditions when signing up for the free service. "We collect limited account information and store and maintain your account and email messages on our secure servers," Google admits, but maintains that all collected information will not be shared or sold without user permission.

"The biggest threat to the privacy of the person's reply is the person they send it to - not the provider," Skelton says in this WebmasterWorld thread.

Several reports have also accused Google's leading competitor Yahoo! of sending Gmail invites straight to the spam filter.

"It's a well known issue with Yahoo! mail that Gmail invitations are being delivered straight into that bulk folder," claims one WebHostingTalk member.

"Since a competing free email service can potentially cut into Yahoo's business, they've set up filters to make it more difficult for Gmail invitations to get to their users (or at least, that's the way it appears)," writes Greg at the Talent Show. "As far as Yahoo is concerned, Gmail invites are spam."

Greg reported that Yahoo!, which recently increased its email storage to 100MB to compete with Google, automatically filters any email from a Gmail address that contains the body of a Gmail invite. If you have accounts with Yahoo! and Gmail or know someone who does, you can test this theory yourself by copying and pasting the following into an email body:

[blank] has invited you to open a free Google Gmail account. The invitation will expire in three weeks and can only be used to set up one account.

To accept this invitation and register for your account, visit http://gmail.google.com/gmail/

Once you create your account, [blank] will be notified with your new @gmail.com address so you can stay in touch with Gmail!

If you haven't already heard about Gmail, it's a new search-based webmail service that offers:

- 1,000 megabytes (one gigabyte) of free storage
- Built-in Google search that instantly finds any message you want
- Automatic arrangement of messages and related replies into "conversations"
- Text ads and related pages that are relevant to the content of your messages

Gmail is still in an early stage of development. If you set up an account, you'll be able to keep it even after we make Gmail more widely available and as one of the system's early testers, you will be helping us improve the service through your feedback. We might ask for your comments and suggestions periodically and we appreciate your help in making Gmail even better.

Thanks,

The Gmail Team

To learn more about Gmail before registering, visit: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/benefits.html

(If clicking the URLs in this message does not work, copy and paste them into the address bar of your browser).

Send the email from your Gmail account to any Yahoo! account, then wait and see what happens. (Thanks to the Talent Show for this idea.)

WebProNews tested this theory and both Gmail invites and emails from Gmail accounts containing the body of Gmail invites were automatically filtered to Yahoo! Mail's "bulk mail" folder.

While privacy concerns may be getting Gmail blocked by some ISPs, Johnson personally doesn't believe Hotmail is blocking Gmail invites, although he says, "If Hotmail is blocking Gmail invites, they aren't doing it on a widespread basis."

WebProNews tested these reports by sending Gmail invites to a Hotmail account, and the invites were successfully received - although Gmail emails to some ISPs were caught by spam filters.

Could it be that Hotmail is blocking emails from Google or is it just a problem with spam filters?

Tell us what you think at WebProWorld, the WebProNews e-Business forum

[stuck_fugu]

im fairly sure they block some, this has been discussed before *cough* search *cough*

but they dont block every single one...when i was sending myself invites to hotmail/yahoo, some went to junk and some were in the inbox

[cvrk3]

anyway, because i did not use hotmail for some time the account got blocked!! no regrets excepting that i have lost some of email addresseses.

[Stuff2Do]

i use my hotmail for messenger, i got 116 unread emails, i havent checked
auto reply is on with my new email addy, and even if ms offered a TB i wouldnt go back, there servers are too slow, and theres too many ads

[joshg678]

I am sure hotmail/yahoo are blocking gmail invites because they don't want to lose the people using there email service. Also hotmail sux because a brand new account will GET spam No matter what, always does..

Originally Posted by Stuff2Do

i use my hotmail for messenger, i got 116 unread emails, i haven't checked
auto reply is on with my new email addy, and even if ms offered a TB i wouldn't go back, there servers are too slow, and theres too many ads

The bad thing about telling people your new email address with an auto responder is that a spam bot could get your new email too. The best thing is to have it forward to your new email and every person you know just reply to them telling them your new email addy.

[Stuff2Do]

Thanks, Will Do

[sirlaguna]

Yeah it preatty sad hotmail and yahoo are pathetic compared to gmail which is brilliant instead of blocking invites they should make there own services better!!!

though all my invites to gmail and hotmail allways are sent and work all my mates had hotmail they now use gmail and they had no trouble but this was quite a while ago now!!!

though i wouldnt be supprised that hotmail did deleate all invites so that people use there service

though gmail is a lot better that hotmail and yahoo but together!!!!!!!!!
or thats wot i think at least

[joshg678]

I can't stand hotmail, anyone i know that uses hotmail, i tell them they need to move to Gmail, and give them an account, because i can't stand M$ for anything, i can bairly stand Windows, only can stand it because games work with it.
For those of you that are n00bs, M$ = Microsoft.

[sirlaguna]

Originally Posted by joshg678

I can't stand hotmail, anyone i know that uses hotmail, i tell them they need to move to Gmail, and give them an account, because i can't stand M$ for anything, i can bairly stand Windows, only can stand it because games work with it.
For those of you that are n00bs, M$ = Microsoft.

Yeah thats wot i did my mates now use gmail and i hate microsoft i too only use it for software available and games and i used to use hotmail be4 i got gmail from isnoop i hate the ads in hotmail they take half the screen and it has terrible storage space and no labels and now i heard u can use gmail in msn messanger i think everyone should at least try gmail