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| | ==Explanation== | | ==Explanation== |
| | + | {{incomplete|Created by [email protected] - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} |
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| − | When performing operations on computer files using a command prompt, the asterisk (*) may be used to represent a collection of items whose names match a particular format. For example, "*.txt" denotes all files whose names end in ".txt". This is called a {{w|wildcard character}}. Similarly, the e-mail address *@gmail.com, as illustrated in the comic, is a proposed feature from Randall that would send an email to ''every'' {{w|Gmail}} user, without having each and every valid Gmail address at hand (of which there are about 1.8 billion). For obvious reasons, this is not actually a feature, but Randall suggests that if Google ever wanted to shut Gmail down, they could either do it this way (possibly causing a service-ending overload of resources) ''or'' allow someone this one last boon (as a farewell gift, knowing that there would be relatively few additional repercussions to deal with). Google does not seem particularly likely to shut down Gmail, as it is a source of information for their advertising and other businesses, but they are known for [https://killedbygoogle.com/ abandoning programs and projects] even after they have been found useful (by at least some people) for years.
| + | {{w|Gmail}} is a very popular email service operated by Google. This comic imagines a world in which Google shuts down the services, as it has done with {{w|Discontinued Google services|many others}}. Randall suggests that if that happens, Google give a single user the chance to send an email to the address "*@gmail.com". |
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| − | Reply-all is a sometimes useful feature of email that nonetheless commonly causes headaches and annoyances for both users and administrators. By allowing users to simply reply to everyone copied on the email, it encourages users to do this rather than think carefully about which people their response should be addressed to. This causes lots of users to receive irrelevant emails, and email servers to have to process and store a lot of unnecessary data. Randall's email is essentially designed to induce every Gmail user to email every other Gmail user, generating an excessively large number of emails.
| + | In programming, the asterisk * is often used as a {{w|wildcard character}}, allowing it to be interpreted as any number of any variety of characters. If interpreted as such by Gmail, "*@gmail.com" would include any email address ending in "@gmail.com," sending this hypothetical email message to every single user on the service. |
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| − | A recurring phenomenon for email users, especially in the early Internet days of the 1990s and 2000s, was a reply all storm – someone would start a message to a very large group, perhaps hundreds, and even if only 5% of recipients replied to say something like “take me off this list“, a storm of dozens of replies would soon follow. Inevitably, new replies to everyone would start saying things like, “stop Replying All!” If this were done with millions of Gmail users instead of just dozens or hundreds, their result would be apocalyptic. A real-life example was [https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nhs-email-reply-all-down a 2016 incident involving 1.2 million staff at the UK National Health Service].
| + | This sort of spam would be annoying on its own, but it is severely exacerbated by the "reply all" feature. The feature allows anyone who receives a given message to send an email to everybody the original message was sent to - in this case, all [https://www.demandsage.com/gmail-statistics/ 1.8 billion users] on the platform. Moreover, by telling people to introduce themselves in the email chain, the sender makes it far more likely that people will reply. Assuming the Gmail servers do not simply crash from the load, this would result in millions of emails flooding every Gmail inbox in the world. |
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| | + | The title-text somehow makes the situation even worse. By adding the "*@outlook.com" and "*@yahoo.com" addresses, the new email (presumably from the original sender, given the use of wildcard privileges) allows everyone using the {{w|Microsoft Outlook}} and {{w|Yahoo! Mail}} services to see the chain as well. While neither service is quite as popular as Gmail, they both have [https://email-verify.my-addr.com/list-of-most-popular-email-domains.php sizable user bases] with millions of active emails each. This would severely worsen the problem, roughly doubling the number of email addresses both receiving and contributing to the "reply-all apocalypse." |
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| − | In reality, the asterisk wildcard is not generally usable via email servers, although email ''clients'' may sometimes implement such a function, internally, perhaps to support mailing-list functions (though more commonly this is done via named address-book 'groups'). That said, the asterisk ''character'' is a valid one that may form part of the name of a mailbox, including group-boxes that might facilitate server-side distribution.
| + | (For obvious reasons, this wildcard functionality is not actually supported by any major email service.) |
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| − | Now, organizations operating their own e-mail domains frequently implement mailing lists such as [email protected] or [email protected], and these lists occasionally cause reply-all storms, which usually results in the organization restricting access to the list to trusted administrators. Here, Randall proposes doing the opposite and opening the list of all Gmail users to everybody. | |
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| − | The title text suggests a reply where someone decides that all users of {{w|Outlook.com}} (formerly Hotmail) and {{w|Yahoo! Mail}}, two further well-known mail services with similarly large user bases, should also be included - "loop in" is common business jargon for {{wiktionary|loop_in#English|meaning "include in communication about something"}}, related to "being in the loop" meaning "being informed and up to date". Accepting this would trigger an even bigger reply-all "apocalypse", as the chain will get even bigger and will include accounts for services not presumably about to be shut down like Gmail is in the comic, thus bringing down all significant platforms for e-mail services, fracturing the internet for most users. This also alludes to an occurrence in email chains where a user replies to simply add another user into the chain, which doesn't add much information to the group.
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| | ==Transcript== | | ==Transcript== |
| | + | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} |
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| − | :[A typical gmail UI]
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| | :To: *@gmail.com (+expand) | | :To: *@gmail.com (+expand) |
| | :Cc: [Empty field] | | :Cc: [Empty field] |
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| | :[Caption:] If Google ever decides to shut down Gmail, they should let one user trigger a global reply-all apocalypse. | | :[Caption:] If Google ever decides to shut down Gmail, they should let one user trigger a global reply-all apocalypse. |
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| − | ==Trivia==
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| − | The number of this comic (2822) is the same as the number of [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2822 RFC 2822], which is the 2001 version of the email specification (it was replaced in 2008 by RFC 5322).
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| | {{comic discussion}} | | {{comic discussion}} |
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| | [[Category:Email]] | | [[Category:Email]] |
| − | [[Category:Google]]
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