Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Gmail gains support for non-ASCII email addresses

Chocolate Factory also reveals kill switch for bothersome listbots

Google has decided to give a two-year-old IETF e-mail standard a push towards universal adoption, by switching on support for RFC 6530 international character support in Gmail.

The RFC was crafted to allow people “to use close variations on their own names (written correctly in their own languages and scripts) as mailbox names in email addresses”, rather than being constrained by English character sets.

As the Chocolate Factory notes in its announcement, adopting a new e-mail standard is difficult since every server between sender and recipient has to support the character sets used for addressing.

That creates a chicken-and-egg problem Google wants to solve by jumping first: “In order for this standard to become a reality, every email provider and every website that asks you for your email address must adopt it. That’s obviously a tough hill to climb. The technology is there, but someone has to take the first step,” the post states.

Of course, there's also an upside for Google. If the best way to have e-mail exchanges between people with non-ASCII addresses is for them both to be on Gmail, users will gravitate in that direction. Since most of the anglophone world is saturated with e-mail addresses, support for international character sets gives Google a strong foothold in non-ASCII (or Unicode) growth markets.

However, it will also put pressure on anyone operating a mail server to get RFC 6530 support working, since they won't want to be bouncing messages back to Gmail because they don't support the addresses.

In this sponsored post at CircleID, “Dot Chinese Online” tested Gmail and noted that Google's paid attention to the small details, like converting the “Chinese dot” (a small circle) into an ASCII dot to comply with IETF standards.

In a separate announcement Google is going to bring "unsubscribe" links for list e-mails to the top of the message, next to the "from" address.

"Now when a sender includes an 'Unsubscribe' link in a Promotions, Social or Forums message, Gmail will surface it to the top, right next to the sender address. If you’re interested in the message’s content, it won’t get in the way, and if not, it’ll make it easier to keep your inbox clutter-free", the announcement states. ®

 

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like