Has anyone here got any experience with using SMTP.com for sending transactional and bulk email via SMPT relay? I would love to know what you think of their service? I'm looking at potential services, and this is one on my radar that doesn't appear to be getting discussed here. But that makes me wonder if there is an obvious reason why not...
I haven't used SES, but I'm guessing it is complex, and "bare bones".
I got the vibe Mandrill didn't want to send any business to their _actual_ competitors.
The time period to make this change sucks. I accept they want to change, and they can do that. But I have paid them money for a service, and the rug is being pulled from under my feet with such a short period of time to work out what to do, and do it.
SES is pretty bare bones, and has had recurring issues with IP reputation management. It's well suited for integration but there are no straightforward simple APIs or dashboards as with Mandrill/SendGrid etc.
I'm interested in your experience with AWS SES. Do you see this as a viable alternative? It is just more complex than Mandrill and other competitors are?
That is very neat. Regarding the choice of charities, did Google let you choose any registered charity, or was it from a list of pre-selected charities?
It's pretty common for people to donate the reward. We're happy to do so for registered charities, and typically increase the amount donated. If a reward goes unclaimed we just make a donation to the International Red Cross.
I'd like to know how much of the $60 billion tax shortfall the US government doesn't receive ends up in being spent by Google (at their discretion) on public works, education etc.
I don't know enough to suggest this is (or isn't) the case, but perhaps this model would allow companies who genuinely want to look after their community to basically choose how money, that would otherwise be tax money, gets spent.
I think lots of people would rather see money spent on public health and education than lots of other areas tax money gets diverted to.
Of course, I'm not so naive as to think that this will take off anytime soon...
That's called a charitable deduction, and it's already part of the tax code.
Google isn't using the charitable deduction; it's simply using a loophole to avoid U.S taxation on income earned from non-US sources. Whether this is bad depends on your view on taxation.
>it's simply using a loophole to avoid U.S taxation on income earned from non-US sources
Income earned from non-US sources on US soil or outside of it? The thing that infuriates me about my home country is that they think I owe taxes on money I've earned while living in a totally different country. What stops, say, Russia from deciding I owe them taxes too?
Regardless of your view on taxation, it seems pretty reasonable to only have to pay taxes in one jurisdiction (the one in which the income occurred). Differing views on taxation could argue over whether one or zero jurisdictions should get to impose taxes, but it seems pretty reasonable that no more than one ought to.
