[misterprime]

This sounds quite short sighted to me. You can’t imagine needing links being sent in everyday workflow at the office, yet I can’t imagine not using links in emails.

How would people interact with vendors and salespeople that send links to product specs, troubleshooting articles, etc?

[bee_rider]

If it is a vendor you are buying hardware from, they could send a part number, for example. The workflow should be go to their site, and search it up.

I don’t think it is short sited. Actually, I think if it has a flaw it is the opposite one. Workflows that involve mailing around links are convenient for quick little in-the-moment thrown together actions. It’s liberating. I’ve done it too, sure. But, in the long run everything should be integrated somehow or another and sending links should not be necessary. One might say it is ridiculous to expect every process to reach that end state. Possibly true, but it is a good goal…

[rwallace]

In general, if a program is not a Web browser, I do not want that program getting clever with displaying a URL as an active link. Just show it as the URL, https prefix and all, so I can see where it will be taking me if I copy it into the browser. (This is one of my very few gripes with Google docs.)