More About Gmail's Proxy

Last week, Google announced that Gmail will load external images using a proxy. I have the new feature in my Gmail account and it's easy to tell when it's enabled - Gmail will show this message:

"Loading images in Gmail is now safer, so you'll automatically see all images within a message when you open it. You can learn about images or change this option in Settings."

So what's new? You no longer have to click "Display images below" to see the images from a message. Until now, Gmail only displayed the images automatically for the people added to your address book (you had to send them a message at least once or manually add them to the address book). Now Gmail shows all the images, except for spam and other messages that are likely to be dangerous. "Gmail scans every message for suspicious content and if Gmail considers a sender or message potentially suspicious, images won't be displayed and you'll be asked whether you want to see the images."

Images are no longer loaded directly from external sites, they're loaded using a Google proxy. Here's an example of URL (I highlighted the original URL of the image):

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEjlc-EWBvdNQJMI34qdZ35gLKy5QIlVwuk5K50ozP_DAFi3aCa6oX7c-GZsvDzZBFER2YtsNRsvkkHJ37famvRYXIHgZz4Ep-FjJSC93T5ZQCI9aS3_9Tf4CeXt0PvN-Z86IaqdSshshlPGUDfHsD3q=s0-d-e1-fthttp://qsf.is.quoracdn.net/-b94cd3f312ea9653.png

Images are only loaded when you open a message and they're not cached by Google (browsers can cache them). Google's requests include: "via ggpht.com GoogleImageProxy" and appear to be from Firefox 3.0.7.

Google compresses images, but sometimes the resulting image is a lot bigger than the original.

The proxy feature can't be disabled. You can only go to Gmail's settings and enable "Ask before displaying external images", so you can manually enable images, but this doesn't disable the proxy.

{ Thanks, Artem. }

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Custom Maps in the New Google Maps

The new version of Google Maps constantly brings back features from the classic Google Maps, which shows that it's almost ready to become the default interface. The new Google Maps shows a link for your custom maps below the search box. If you click the link, you should see a list of custom maps created with Maps Engine Lite or My Maps.

You can access your five most recent My Maps and Maps Engine maps in the new Google Maps. To quickly get to your custom maps:

* Open Google Maps and make sure you're signed-in.
* Click into the searchbox.
* Click the 'My custom maps' suggestion that appears below.
* Click the name of the map you want to view. Your map will either open in My Maps or Maps Engine.

You can also still access all of your My Maps and My Places content (available through classic Maps). To get there from the new Google Maps, click the Gear icon gear menu in the bottom right and select My Places.

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Auto Awesome Snow Shake in Google+ for Android

This is another fun feature for the holidays, but it's limited to the Google+ app for Android: "Shake your device while viewing one of your photos, and watch the snow fall. Shake it again to save your new snowy photo and share it with family and friends."

It's a way to manually trigger the Auto Awesome Snow effect for any photo.

You need the latest version of the Google+ app (4.2.4), which was released today. Blame staged rollouts if you don't have the new version. You can also manually download the APK file.

This is not the only new feature: "when you +1 posts in the stream, you'll see something lovely" (hearts). There's also a unified search box, a new section for less important notifications and separate "What's Hot" streams for different categories.

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Updated Google Settings Page

The Google Settings page has received a major makeover and switched to the card interface that's used in many Google services and apps. The page is more compact, better optimized for mobile devices and only focuses on the most important features. Advanced features like Google Dashboard or Takeout are linked from the "data tools" section. Google+ settings are available if you click "edit notification settings" and this page also has a new interface.

The security section lets you change your password and recovery options.

The language section lets you skip translations for one or more languages and also enable input tools.

While the new interface looks nice, I feel that there are too many links that send you to separate pages and the transition is not smooth. Here's an example for Google Takeout, which shows a "Data Tools" link that sends you back to the Google Settings page:

{ Thanks, Emanuele, JD, Jérôme. }

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Google Uses a Proxy to Load Gmail Images

This is one of those features that users will love and marketers will hate (or maybe it's the other way around?). Until now, Gmail didn't display the images from messages sent by people that aren't in your address book if those images had to be loaded from an external site. You had to click "display images below" or "always display images from..." to see the images. This was done to protect your privacy: embedded images could set cookies or include unique IDs and inform those who sent the messages that you've read them or that the email address is active. Many newsletters and spam messages include images.

Google found a way to address this issue: it will display all the images by default, but load them from a proxy server. "Instead of serving images directly from their original external host servers, Gmail will now serve all images through Google's own secure proxy servers. So what does this mean for you? Simple: your messages are more safe and secure, your images are checked for known viruses or malware, and you'll never have to press that pesky 'display images below' link again. With this new change, your email will now be safer, faster and more beautiful than ever," informs Gmail's blog.

"Some senders try to use externally linked images in harmful ways, but Gmail takes action to ensure that images are loaded safely. Gmail serves all images through Google's image proxy servers and transcodes them before delivery to protect you in the following ways: senders can't use image loading to get information like your IP address or location, senders can't set or read cookies in your browser, Gmail checks your images for known viruses or malware. In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links," mentions Gmail's help center.

If the images are loaded using a proxy, the external server still receives a request and the sender can find if you've read the message. After all, this could actually be a good news for marketers: they may not get your IP address, but they'll know if you've read the message.

Here's some text that has been removed from the Gmail help article:

When you receive an email that contains externally linked images, Gmail usually doesn’t display the images automatically. This behavior is designed to help protect your privacy; if we displayed the images automatically, it could potentially allow the sender of the email to see that the images are being fetched, and therefore know when you've read their message. But, if someone you've sent email at least twice sends you a message with images in it, you'll see the image by default (because the people in this group are likely people you know and trust).

You can still choose to manually authorize images by selecting "Ask before displaying external images" in Gmail's settings. This is especially useful if you have a slow Internet connection or you want to be extra safe.

So when will you get the new feature? "This new improvement will be rolling out on desktop starting today and to your Gmail mobile apps in early 2014."

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Google's Animated Decorations for Christmas

Last month, I mentioned that Google's search results pages got some special decorations when searching for [Hanukkah] and [Festivus]. Nothing for Christmas? Todd Kuk, a reader of this blog, says he noticed an animated image when searching for [Christmas], [A Christmas carol] and other queries that include "Christmas". I tried these queries, but I don't see the ornaments.

The animated GIFs:

Todd also recorded this video:

Here are the decorations from 2011 and from 2012.

{ Thanks, Todd. }

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The New Google Sheets

There's a new version of Google Sheets. "It's faster, supports larger spreadsheets, has a number of new features, and works offline," informs Google.

Just in case you're wondering how to enable it, you should go to Google Drive's settings page, enable "Try the new Google Sheets" in the Editing tab and click "Save". You'll get the new version of the application only for the files you create from now on. The existing files will still open in the old Google Sheets.

There are some missing features in the new Google Sheets (protected sheets, spell check, publishing) and this shows that this is an early release.

So what's new? You can create and edit spreadsheets offline in Chrome, just like in Docs and Slides. The new Sheets is designed with performance in mind and handles huge spreadsheets: it supports 2 million cells of data and all of the other limitations have been removed. You're no longer limited to 256 columns per sheet. Other improvements: spreadsheets load faster and scrolling is smoother.

There are some new formula editing tools. "In the new Google Sheets, we've made it easier to build complex formulas in your spreadsheets. For example, you'll now see syntax highlighting, which shows you the argument in your function that you are working on, and you'll get more details on how to fix errors in your formula by hovering over them." Google also added 24 new functions, including SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, and AVERAGEIF.

Another new feature is called filter views and it lets you create, save and share filters, so you can get different views of your data without disrupting how others are viewing your spreadsheet.

"In the new Google Sheets, you can apply conditional formatting using a custom formula. This allows you to apply formatting to a cell or range of cells based on the contents of other cells."

You can also add a color to each of your sheet tabs, paste a rotated version of the copied cells from a column to a row or from a row to a column, restrict find and replace to a range of cells and apply custom formatting for currencies, dates, and numbers.

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