Why No One Has Tamed Email

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/19/why-no-one-has-tamed-email/

by nikunjk • 12 years ago

8 5 12 years ago

ellisonf9• 12 years ago

Interestingly enough, I was watching a PG's interview at the Airbnb office. PG mentioned that a really good way to find good startup ideas is to see what hackers are talking about. Has anyone else noticed how any post email related seems to get a fair amount of attention on HN?

gtremper• 12 years ago

It's on PG's list of ambitious startup ideas. http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

Someone1234• 12 years ago

Because Microsoft's Exchange is to email as IE 6 was to HTTP/s. It is by far the most popular[0] mail server in the world and more to the point it is used by a lot of influential organisations (government, accademia, et al).

However Exchange hasn't done anything innovative in at least ten years and if Exchange doesn't move forward then nothing else does either, as everything else is aiming to be compatible with Exchange and little else.

If Google (Gmail) and Microsoft (Outlook.com, Exchange, Office 365, et al) came out tomorrow with a way to progress email into the future it WOULD happen. It wouldn't happen overnight (unless backwards compatibility was assured) but it would eventually happen.

If you could get Google, Microsoft, and the OSS crowd onboard (Postfix, Sendmail, et al) then it would be even more successful and we might be onto something new within five years give or take (as most of the webmail would migrate, Exchange, and so on).

But Microsoft and Google are businesses, and why would they invest capital into new-email when it won't generate revenue? Exchange/Office 356 is going to sell with or without this as is GApps.

[0] http://www.stillhq.com/research/smtp/survey/poster-lisa2007....

vonklaus• 12 years ago

I don't really buy into this. Largely, email is a product that works pretty well out of the box. Filling in 2 forms can pull in gmail to a Mac or iOS device. Spam filters knock out spam pretty easily, which would likely need to be configured by the user anyway. Haven't really had a serious pain point with e-mail. I like technology so I would be willing to try this out, but to really get high adoption they would have to provide like a 10x improvement over traditional email, and clients. I frankly don't think this is possible. Also, email is largely free, so if you are not offering a crypto product, I can't see a business case for this. People already have completely simple and free email.

krapp• 12 years ago

Most of the "problems" listed here are UI and client (and people) issues which the author (who runs an email startup) places at the feet of his competition, and they have nothing to do with email itself.

The reason no one has tamed email is that email works just fine - and an argument that everyone should just switch to a particular startup or app is just absurd.

Why No One Has Tamed Email

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