Dynamic Emails Are Coming to Gmail and Outlook

Google-owned AMP Open Source Project is launching a major new feature today. AMP Project is releasing support for dynamic emails on AMP Email, allowing companies to create dynamic emails that you can interact with right from your inbox.

Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail are three of the mainstream email providers that will be introducing support for dynamic emails using AMP. That means if an email uses AMP, you will be able to interact with it right from your inbox.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

On Gmail, dynamic email support is rolling out today on the web. Google says the company wants to bring the feature to mobile devices in the future, though a specific release date isn’t available.

Microsoft’s Outlook is going to introduce support for dynamic email with AMP Email as a preview for Outlook.com users and expects the preview to be ready by this Summer. Yahoo, on the other hand, says it’s “excited” to be part of the program, though it’s not saying when the feature will arrive or if it’s already available.

Some of the major services using dynamic email with AMP Mail include Google Docs, which will allow you to respond to comment threads on files right from your inbox, for example. Booking.com, Despegar, Doodle, Ecwid, Freshworks, Nexxt, OYO Rooms, Pinterest and redBus will also be using AMP Email to offer interactive emails right on your inbox.

The idea behind dynamic email sounds really useful, but it will only really be useful if people actually start to adopt the new technology. Not only do developers need to start adopting the new tech, but your email client also needs to support the new platform. And I don’t think any of that is going to happen soon.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 27 comments

  • spacein_vader

    Premium Member
    26 March, 2019 - 1:31 pm

    <p>Sounds like a potential security nightmare. If it comes to exchange/outlook I'm sure many sys admins will want to disable it. </p>

    • MikeGalos

      27 March, 2019 - 9:05 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#415639">In reply to spacein_vader:</a></em></blockquote><p>Precisely. Outlook/Exchange DID have this capability in the late 1990s (but nobody noticed) and it was pulled because of security issues.</p>

  • CompUser

    26 March, 2019 - 2:52 pm

    <p>"That means if an email uses AMP, you will be able to interact with it right from your inbox." </p><p><br></p><p>Maybe I'm demonstrating what an uneducated twit I am, but don't we already interact with our Email right from the inbox? I mean, you open the Email right from the inbox, and interact with it, right?</p>

    • bill_russell

      26 March, 2019 - 4:06 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#415654">In reply to CompUser:</a></em></blockquote><p>Reading and responding to email or clicking links doesn't really count as being interactive. These are probably more dynamic like web apps or something, and "lightweight" via AMP.</p>

      • CompUser

        26 March, 2019 - 7:19 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#415680"><em>In reply to Bill_Russell:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><em>Yea, opening attachment from inside an Email launches Adobe, Word, Excel, whatever app/program the attachment requires to open. That's being interactive right from the inbox. So I'm still not sure what exactly is being added here, other than a specific name to an ability/function that currently doesn't have a name so people think they're getting something new.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • christian.hvid

    26 March, 2019 - 2:54 pm

    <p>C'mon, Outlook has supported dynamic email since the nineties. ActiveX FTW! :)</p><p><br></p><p>On a more serious note, wouldn't this open up a whole new range of opportunities for phishing attacks? Tricking people into giving up their passwords or credit card numbers will be so much easier when you don't have to direct them to a suspicious looking web site first. </p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      27 March, 2019 - 3:41 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#415655">In reply to christian.hvid:</a></em></blockquote><p>Exactly, and about 2 years after it was launched, it was shown to be a bad idea. Putting scripting in emails is totally insane.</p>

      • christian.hvid

        27 March, 2019 - 7:11 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#415839">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yeah, I thought nobody would open that particular can of worms again, but there you go. </p><p><br></p><p>Google apparently plans to address the security concerns by only allowing trusted parties to send AMP email, but once you've enabled scripting it's only a matter of time before somebody finds a way to abuse it.</p>

        • Skolvikings

          27 March, 2019 - 9:32 am

          <blockquote><em><a href="#415865">In reply to christian.hvid:</a></em></blockquote><p>Honestly, what's the difference between email and the web at this point? AMP scripting will be limited, and if you allow a web browser on the device, this will likely be even safer than that, tbh.</p>

          • christian.hvid

            27 March, 2019 - 10:02 am

            <blockquote><em><a href="#415882">In reply to Skolvikings:</a></em></blockquote><p>Actually, I'm less worried about the scripting aspect than the interactivity aspect. If your aunt Hilda gets an email from "Apple" saying something like "<em>To continue receiving important security updates, please enter your Apple ID password in the box below and click Submit"</em>, or an email from "Amazon" prompting her to re-enter her credit card number "<em>for verification</em>", I'm not so sure she wouldn't fall for it. Unless, of course, your aunt Hilda is as tech-savvy as everyone says she is. :)</p>

            • Craig.

              28 March, 2019 - 12:46 pm

              <blockquote><em><a href="#415885">In reply to christian.hvid:</a></em></blockquote><p>Pretty sure Gmail and Outlook's spam filters would be able to filter out something that blatant, besides she'd probably click the link and enter it on the scammer's website anyway.</p>

          • wright_is

            Premium Member
            28 March, 2019 - 9:28 am

            <blockquote><em><a href="#415882">In reply to Skolvikings:</a></em></blockquote><p>Because it is opening up (or rather dramatically increasing) an attack vector onto PCs. Email is bad enough as it is, with links to malware or infected attachments, without letting email proactively infect the users machine.</p><p>Just because the web browser is a mess doesn't mean we should weaken everything else as well.</p><p>Maybe we should, well, I don't know, fix the web browser first, then look at moving its technologies over to email?</p>

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    26 March, 2019 - 3:02 pm

    <p>So what happens when you send one of these to a non AMP enabled mailbox?</p>

  • simont

    Premium Member
    26 March, 2019 - 3:59 pm

    <p>And how long before spammers start abusing this feature I wonder.</p>

  • walterwood44

    26 March, 2019 - 4:10 pm

    <p>This article might make sense if we knew whatg AMP and Dynamic emails were and did. But then, this is typical of the aritcles here in that they assume we know what they are writing about. </p>

  • techguy33

    26 March, 2019 - 6:54 pm

    <p>They reinvented old Lotus Notes?</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      27 March, 2019 - 3:42 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#415736">In reply to techguy33:</a></em></blockquote><p>And Exchange forms.</p>

  • minke

    26 March, 2019 - 7:36 pm

    <p>Hmmm, not sure if I will like this. There is something to be said for calmly contemplating written responses to emails without having to deal with instant replies flying around. This is one reason instant messaging isn't always successful in the workplace. The example above is a good example of how the instant reply is ambiguous and confusing at first glance, at least to me. I can remember epic workplace messaging threads that descended into farce until someone took the bull by the horns and (gasp!) called someone on the phone to find out what they really meant. Also, it will be interesting to see how the phishers and scammers take advantage of it.</p>

  • Sam Brien

    27 March, 2019 - 12:01 am

    <p>Might as well embed flash while they are screwing up something that isn’t broken.</p>

  • Pierre Masse

    27 March, 2019 - 12:33 am

    <p>What? Yahoo mail still exists?</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    27 March, 2019 - 3:40 am

    <p>What is the one thing the last 20 years has taught us? Scripting in applications is dangerous, scripting in email is totally insane…</p>

    • AnOldAmigaUser

      Premium Member
      27 March, 2019 - 11:20 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#415838">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.</p>

  • Rob_Wade

    27 March, 2019 - 10:56 am

    <p>I guess I need to see an actual demonstration of what this really does. Just based on the description, it seems like we already interact with emails directly from the Inbox. I mean, that's what we actually DO. We read and email and respond. That's interacting. So, if there's a better live demonstration somewhere that does a good job of illustrating what's different about this, I'd appreciate it.</p>

  • vanram

    27 March, 2019 - 11:36 am

    <p>I am a huge fan of Thurrott.com, its premium info and its professional technical journalists. I read your RSS feed everyday. Therefore please accept this ounce of feedback… </p><p>I have never heard of this concept of "Dynamic Email" and when I saw this article I was intrigued to find out what it was and why Google and Microsoft were deploying it. </p><p>I found that the only explanation of what it is was the phrase "<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">interact with right from your inbox". My immediate reaction was great but what is it? Please in an article like this have a sentence, especially on a technical blog, that explains what something is, and some pointer about how it works.</span></p><p><br></p>

    • Craig.

      28 March, 2019 - 12:46 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#415908">In reply to vanram:</a></em></blockquote><p>There's a website called Google that can help in these situations</p>

      • vanram

        28 March, 2019 - 4:06 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#416196">In reply to Craig.:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yup, must be the problem using bing… But really it was just an expectation that an article would be complete topic of information. But I do not want to loose sight of the fact that this blog is great and I would only bother to make comments in such a context.</p>

  • AnOldAmigaUser

    Premium Member
    27 March, 2019 - 11:47 am

    <p>Google must see this as something to drive more ads and therefore revenue. Otherwise, there is absolutely no reason for this; it is the email equivalent of ActiveX, and that worked out really well didn't it?</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC