images in emails not displayed in Gmail clients (browser or mobile)

Question

For months/years we have been battling Google support on fixing an issue we're seeing so I'm wondering if others have come across the same thing.

Images in emails sent by CiviCRM (CiviMail or just via "send email") do not display in Gmail clients (both browser-based and mobile, e.g. Android app).

They do display perfectly when the very same email is being viewed in any other non-Gmail client (yes, even Outlook gets this right).

The images are publicly/globally available, but Google replaces the image URL with a proxy URL of sorts. E.g. they turn this: https://www.evergreenmtb.org/media/civicrm/persist/contribute/images/images/newsletter-header-evergreen-kittitas.jpg

to this (which gets you a 404 error when accessed directly): https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/e-K9WkNS0vJgrFL_anW3XB4jzMkNZsp-DOm7d04zIaqOY-o-UXAQF9o3FvrKJAGi2VD_fjUnyJ2xg_ywd8kBe7n22rJoBTzD2HaFilJOKK9zab8GkvkCKodIpv4s7aNA2BwPIoQER03tyR_vZZ4qFiFwO6B2uYSDF1Pjioo-zB6Hg6No6qsx=s0-d-e1-ft#https://www.evergreenmtb.org/media/civicrm/persist/contribute/images/images/newsletter-header-evergreen-kittitas.jpg

Display images "always" option is selected in Gmail settings, the sender is saved as a contact, etc.

I sent Google a gazillion examples, including email source files, HAR files, you name it, but to-date no dice.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

Answer 1

thanks for the hint; solved this by whitelisting the following domains in WHM in the "Add IP to Firewall" section:

ci3.googleusercontent.com
ci4.googleusercontent.com 
ci5.googleusercontent.com
ci6.googleusercontent.com

Answer 2

I sent an email containing your image URL from my Civi site to a gmail account and observed the same issue, while images from my site work as expected. See this possible solution -- "one of our security firewalls blocked Google Image Proxy from accessing our images"

Answer 3

Si esta usando el Cpanel deshabilite la opción "Protección de enlace directo"

Edit - Google translation: If you are using the Cpanel disable the "Direct link protection" option