No, Google doesn’t hate responsive design

I’ve seen a bunch of folks panic about some phrasing in Google’s Email sender guidelines.

Buried deep in the Message formatting section Google say:

Don’t use HTML and CSS to hide content in your messages. Hiding content might cause messages to be marked as spam.

Read literally that might cause you to wonder about your use of CSS display:none to switch between different content on desktop and mobile.

But that’s not what Google are concerned about – they’re targeting spammers who load up their mail with hidden text (“hashbusters“) in an attempt to make the content of the mail look like one thing to spam filters and a completely different thing to the human recipient. And a variety of similar deceptive behaviour intended to avoid spam filters, or avoid the spam folder or the promotions tab.

(This is common behaviour amongst bottom of the barrel spammers. If you see someone pitching you a “magic code” that’ll “get you to the inbox”, this is what they’re selling).

If your mail is responsive, not deceptive, you don’t have anything to worry about.