Google joins BIMI initiative

This past week gave way to a big announcement from Google committing to the BIMI pilot program. BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a secure and regulated way to allow for a brand’s logo to appear in the inbox of authenticated email. The approved BIMI logo would appear in a set space in the inbox that is controlled by the mailbox provider. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the possible impact of BIMI… the increased logo impressions and brand trust and recognition. It will set a brand’s email apart from the rest.

The use of BIMI will only work if both the logo and email are verified properly. The email must pass the DMARC standards of “quarantine” or “reject” and the logo must be validated by a third-party who will issue a new type of certification called the Verified Mark Certificate (VMC). Both of these verifications assist against fraud via the email sender and the use of the logo/brand.

Google has joined Yahoo! Mail, along with others, with its pledge to contribute to the AuthIndicators Working Group, which is a vendor-neutral committee of companies working on ways of creating a trustworthy and user-friendly inbox while decreasing the amount of email fraud. Yahoo! Mail launched it’s BIMI pilot in 2018 and Google now expects their pilot program to launch in 2020. Given Google’s massive footprint in the industry, this announcement will likely spur a large increased interest in the BIMI standard and the pilot program.