I don't think the premise is right. From the beginning to now, Gmail evolved quite a bit. For one, they used their analytical knowledge to prioritize emails, which I found to be very helpful. Two, they started filtering newsletters and advertisements automatically. Third, the UI got revamped quite a bit. Add to that all the basics Gmail does right (spamfiltering, tag+-syntax, …), and you see why it is hard to compete.
That said, I don't use gmail anymore because I don't want my emails to be directly in the hands of the NSA.
But let's focus on their list for a bit. Because innovating a sector is not a goal. Having a goal and therefore innovating, that is a goal. So, does the list they formulated hold up? I don't think so:
better interfaces: Better than gmail? Good luck. Besides, even old-style programs like claws-mail, sylpheed and thunderbird have really good interfaces, for their purpose.
better email management: Gmail does that. And one has to be really careful with that: It is not something every user need, sure not something every user wants, especially if it even once sorts something the wrong way.
better workflow integration: Emails are not tasks. They don't need task management in general. Emails are a communication medium, and sometimes, they contain or become tasks. but that is not a general requirement for users.
better attachment handling: What does that mean besides searching for attachments, maybe including their title, and browsing through the photos? Like attachments.me tried to do. But all of that is not innovation…
better social integration: The action one might want to do, like tweetbacks, should be linked in the email. Isn't that already the case? Blogs do that (ok, serendipity does, don't know about the others).
better prioritisation and analytic: To general. Besides, Gmail tries that already.
So, hmpf. Though I want to add that their general product idea (shared inboxes for taskmanagement) doesn't look bad, for a very specific usecase.
I agree with you almost entirely. Although I do have one specific minor off-topic feature I'd love to have in email that I haven't seen anywhere.
I want the ability to "like" an email, and have the sender know that I "liked" it. I don't want to write "yes, I agree", or even worse, a terse response of "like" as I feel that's a waste of my time, the sender's time, an unnecessary "+1" in their inbox.
I just want a way to say "I read your email and it sounds good to me" without having to actually write anything. Just click the "heart" or whatever symbol, and the sender is notified next time they open their email client with the heart showing next to the thread. Would work out nicely for lists and group emails as well.
I suppose there are clunky workarounds that would allow such a thing dependent upon client implementation, but it's just not that significant of a thing.
As for shared inboxen for task management, I'd recommend Asana (with whom I've no affiliation, besides being a happy customer).
To a lot of corporations email is more like version control. The attachments are the source code, and the text of the message is like comments in code. The stream of information is a fundamental output of the business, and is definitely not just a communication medium. Managing that stream is not something that can be fully automated; it just needs better tools (like Github achieves for Version control).
Emails are not tasks? I disagree. You're right that they are a communication medium but it not incompatible. From my point of view most of the time they are both.
The #1 difficulty with email startups is that they have to invent a market that doesn't exist and doesn't want to exist.
Few people even know that they can access Gmail anywhere other than at mail.google.com or via the Gmail app. Ditto for hotmail/outlook.com and pretty much every other freemail service out there. And of course ad-supported freemail providers have no incentive to let their users access email with a third-party app.
The distinction between an email service and an email app is so murky in the minds of most people, that Mozilla added a dialog box to Thunderbird where they offer to create a new email account for the user. Seriously, a lot of people were wondering why Thunderbird didn't come with its own email address! Instead of trying to dispel this myth, Mozilla just let people keep believing it.
You're ignoring enterprise, there is a huge industry around business email hosting which more often than not uses an email client (and more often than not that client is outlook or the iphone mail app).
Google Apps was certainly taking a huge chunk out of enterprise, but I don't know if that's still happening now that you have to pay for it from employee #1.
Outlook usage is so embedded and big enough that Google built a sync app, but moderately funnily, the 'how to integrate google apps with Outlook' video on this page is missing, not sure if that's a reflection of how few people use it?
That would allow developers to do creative things with email. It may even give way to niceties such as:
npm install email-itinerary-parser
These events could be standardised across the board. A plugin ecosystem would allow emails to operate much like blogging platforms do today. You could have a self-hosted email platform with a plugin dashboard where you would pick and choose your plugins. The UI would be the hard part but is a tractable problem given the state of client-side MVC libraries that didn't exist until a few years ago.
A service like Akismet would provide SPAM filtering and other services could be built around it. The trust factor would be an issue but it might be even possible to send these services only extrapolated data instead of the entire contents of the email.
It would even be possible to build atypical interfaces around your email. You could for example build a blogs UI that shows all emails sent to [email protected]. The blogs Controller could automatically reply to that email with the published status.
In general, things could move in a progressive direction much faster in the hands of the developer community.
This thread is one discussion where I hardly see any coherence or modality in opinions (not that it's bad). To me, this indicates that email innovation has a lot of latent potential.
For example, email could have evolved to encompass messaging as a first class citizen rather than an add-on widget.
I see this as similar to Blueray, a solution searching for a problem. The vast majority of people don't have a significant problem with the current implementation of email, and those that do develop workflows. It's like a toaster, it works fine as it.
Email in its existence is a medium of communication and there can be innovation in the the modes of communication but the service in its own concept is difficult to be changed. Its same as saying to innovate on letter writing.
I was going to say much the same that it works fine already. Although thinking about it there have been real improvements like being able to send 2GB files with gmail which was darn hard 20 years ago. And presently if I compose a reply with gmail it does it in a stupid little pop up window while if I fire up Outlook it takes like 5 minutes to come to life. So maybe it's not all perfect yet.
Actually what still bugs me is that I use email as my default record of all conversations I've had since 94 or so but I have not found a way for it to include SMS messages. Facebook you can forward to email but not SMS as far as I know. I want to be able to say to the program show me all the conversations with Bob last year and see everything, SMS, WhatsApp etc included. So come on startup dudes, build away! I daresay much of the problem is the likes of Apple being precious about letting you download the SMSs, but anyway.
[+] [-] onli|12 years ago|reply
That said, I don't use gmail anymore because I don't want my emails to be directly in the hands of the NSA.
But let's focus on their list for a bit. Because innovating a sector is not a goal. Having a goal and therefore innovating, that is a goal. So, does the list they formulated hold up? I don't think so:
better interfaces: Better than gmail? Good luck. Besides, even old-style programs like claws-mail, sylpheed and thunderbird have really good interfaces, for their purpose.
better email management: Gmail does that. And one has to be really careful with that: It is not something every user need, sure not something every user wants, especially if it even once sorts something the wrong way.
better workflow integration: Emails are not tasks. They don't need task management in general. Emails are a communication medium, and sometimes, they contain or become tasks. but that is not a general requirement for users.
better attachment handling: What does that mean besides searching for attachments, maybe including their title, and browsing through the photos? Like attachments.me tried to do. But all of that is not innovation…
better social integration: The action one might want to do, like tweetbacks, should be linked in the email. Isn't that already the case? Blogs do that (ok, serendipity does, don't know about the others).
better prioritisation and analytic: To general. Besides, Gmail tries that already.
So, hmpf. Though I want to add that their general product idea (shared inboxes for taskmanagement) doesn't look bad, for a very specific usecase.
[+] [-] enobrev|12 years ago|reply
I want the ability to "like" an email, and have the sender know that I "liked" it. I don't want to write "yes, I agree", or even worse, a terse response of "like" as I feel that's a waste of my time, the sender's time, an unnecessary "+1" in their inbox.
I just want a way to say "I read your email and it sounds good to me" without having to actually write anything. Just click the "heart" or whatever symbol, and the sender is notified next time they open their email client with the heart showing next to the thread. Would work out nicely for lists and group emails as well.
I suppose there are clunky workarounds that would allow such a thing dependent upon client implementation, but it's just not that significant of a thing.
As for shared inboxen for task management, I'd recommend Asana (with whom I've no affiliation, besides being a happy customer).
[+] [-] 7952|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathouc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvm|12 years ago|reply
Then I hope you don't send any messages in plaintext, and good luck with the headers.
[+] [-] kijin|12 years ago|reply
Few people even know that they can access Gmail anywhere other than at mail.google.com or via the Gmail app. Ditto for hotmail/outlook.com and pretty much every other freemail service out there. And of course ad-supported freemail providers have no incentive to let their users access email with a third-party app.
The distinction between an email service and an email app is so murky in the minds of most people, that Mozilla added a dialog box to Thunderbird where they offer to create a new email account for the user. Seriously, a lot of people were wondering why Thunderbird didn't come with its own email address! Instead of trying to dispel this myth, Mozilla just let people keep believing it.
[+] [-] mattmanser|12 years ago|reply
Google Apps was certainly taking a huge chunk out of enterprise, but I don't know if that's still happening now that you have to pay for it from employee #1.
Outlook usage is so embedded and big enough that Google built a sync app, but moderately funnily, the 'how to integrate google apps with Outlook' video on this page is missing, not sure if that's a reflection of how few people use it?
https://support.google.com/a/answer/33322?hl=en
[+] [-] aleem|12 years ago|reply
All that would be required to jumpstart the innovation process is a developer-friendly API and standardised events for extending email:
That would allow developers to do creative things with email. It may even give way to niceties such as: These events could be standardised across the board. A plugin ecosystem would allow emails to operate much like blogging platforms do today. You could have a self-hosted email platform with a plugin dashboard where you would pick and choose your plugins. The UI would be the hard part but is a tractable problem given the state of client-side MVC libraries that didn't exist until a few years ago.A service like Akismet would provide SPAM filtering and other services could be built around it. The trust factor would be an issue but it might be even possible to send these services only extrapolated data instead of the entire contents of the email.
It would even be possible to build atypical interfaces around your email. You could for example build a blogs UI that shows all emails sent to [email protected]. The blogs Controller could automatically reply to that email with the published status.
In general, things could move in a progressive direction much faster in the hands of the developer community.
[+] [-] hobbes|12 years ago|reply
It could be suggested that Wave was a revolution rather than an evolution, and that was its greatest weakness. I'm sad that it's gone.
[+] [-] agerlic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chalgo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] l_perrin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwerta|12 years ago|reply
I think largest email innovation is right now happening at KDE with integration of KMail into rest of the desktop.
[+] [-] 1stop|12 years ago|reply
Outlook Web Access... yeah that changed the world, gmail was but a shadow in its glory.
[+] [-] p4bl0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saurik|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enscr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Delmania|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glassapps|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsTea|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parax|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sigsergv|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aoyagi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathouc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sfk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emillon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drcongo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PsychoBilly|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|12 years ago|reply
Actually what still bugs me is that I use email as my default record of all conversations I've had since 94 or so but I have not found a way for it to include SMS messages. Facebook you can forward to email but not SMS as far as I know. I want to be able to say to the program show me all the conversations with Bob last year and see everything, SMS, WhatsApp etc included. So come on startup dudes, build away! I daresay much of the problem is the likes of Apple being precious about letting you download the SMSs, but anyway.