I have always been a fan of Google. They have provided the internet with countless useful tools, and have acquired and improved upon many more (such as Picasa and Youtube). However, I have lately discovered just how frustrating it can be trying to work more seriously with the services they provide.
About a month ago, I helped to found (and now preside over) the Japanese Animation & Culture Club at my college. As we were only able to secure a club room one day a week, the club officers agreed that a weekly newsletter would help us to be more involved, discuss a greater range of topics and most importantly, organize club outings. Further, it would allow club members whose schedules conflicted with the weekly meeting to stay up-to-date.
I set up a Gmail account specifically for the purpose of sending out said newsletters, and spent many hours collecting information and designing the perfect layout. When all was said and done, I pasted our enormous roster of over 60 members into the BCC field, attached the newsletter, and clicked send.
Immediately, two or three emails were bounced. Okay, I expected some typos, I'll just have to get those emails again later. But then, with every moment, more and more came pouring back into my inbox until finally I had 65 replies of "message rejected." Google had marked my carefully-crafted letter as spam.
In frustration, I tried to send it again, this time with only 10 recipients. Surely that will be fine. All ten returned within moments. There is no way I am sending out 65 individual newsletters; there has to be a better solution.
Google's FAQ provided a few solutions to the query "Why aren't my messages being sent?", including using Google Groups for sending mass emails, as in the case of invitations or newsletters. Fine, that shouldn't take too long. I went through the sign-up process and created a group, inviting all 65 emails on our roster to join.
With the same distrustful attitude, I am told on the next screen that Google will manually review the invite requests to this group, and that I need to "provide an explanation for where these new members come from and why they would want to be part of your group. Note that Google takes a very dim view of Spam." I can't even think of a less-polite way to word that. "If they complain, you will be banned from our service and your group will be deleted."
I know that "guilty until proven innocent" is the norm in some countries, but I didn't expect "don't be evil" Google to operate under such a principle.
