> Not saying this isn't a problem, but it probably doesn't affect 99% of email users.

So, with a conservative one billion email users, only 10 million users see this problem.

This is pedantry, but 1 billion isn't all that conservative. GMail announced ~425M users in June 2012 and announced 900M a month and a half ago.

Thanks for pointing out the real numbers. In my defence, I was thinking "conservative for the near future", so the next 5 years or so. An of course giving 9M users a bad experience isn't that great either.

If we're being pedantic, it's probably worth noting that the "99%" was a completely arbitrary assumption, and trying to run statistics based on one anecdote and an unfounded assumption is not going to produce accurate results.

True. I suppose the main point is that with a billion users, even some "small fraction" of users having problems, is going to translate to a lot of people having problems.

Honestly, if Google took support even half-seriously (or: they considered eg: users of gmail their customers, rather than just their advertisers) -- these kind of issues wouldn't be so bad.

I do think it's just a question of time before Google relegates itself to irrelevance through a strictly inferior product though.

> I decided to do a quick check of my gmail; there were 151 emails in spam, and literally not one I would want in my inbox.

I find about 2 a week that have been marked as Spam and shouldn't have been. Your experience is not everyones (nor is mine).

Just FYI, most spam does not even reach your spam folder.

What happens to it? It gets blackholed somehow?

Mail relay servers deny its acceptance.

Google can also decide it's not even worth showing in the spam folder - the spam folder is for things it's less certain of.

True. We send thousands of emails a week and all of a sudden a large portion weren't even delivered. Turns out it's all DMARC and once those policies were fixed (assigned at all) the delivery denials ended.

This helped us:

https://dmarc.postmarkapp.com

Oddly, I have had the opposite problem. This past week I have had to delete 4 or 5 obvious V!@g&a!!!!!-type spam emails from my priority tab of my inbox. I can't remember the last time I had that happen. Something isn't working quite right.

Have been seeing the same thing here as well. With spam messages coming through as normal mail.

I have also been having any messages that are replies to messages I send being diverted to my spam folder randomly. It is happening on both my personal gmail account and on a business account.

It seems lately Google has really been less focused on the core components that made them successful in the first place. I have found their search results seem to be returning more spam sites than before. My vote is to get Matt Cutts to come back and start cleaning up spam again :)

I wonder if they rolled out some kind of new algorithm, or major algorithm change before it was ready for prime time.

"I would want in my inbox"

Unfortunately that's not the definition of spam.

But that is his/her definition of spam. And as someone who has worked in the anti spam field, I'm ok with that.

However I have the same problems Linus has so I am not excusing gmail one bit in this.

But the people with a warped view of spam ruin it for everyone else.

So by your generous estimate, it affects more than one million users. Sounds kinda bad.