Gmail is good, but it's not the features so much as the complexity of running my own mail server that's stopping me moving off it (to say nothing of the fact I am not a "Unicorn"). The current DIY offerings are far too heavy and complex. It's a pity because there are a lot of apps that could use the identity/data layer of email if it was simpler to use. By simple I mean if we were inventing it today then a simple JSON under the protection ssl would be a decent starting point. Extensions over the basics could be flagged in the subject header with the payload as another JSON file in the basic attachment infrastructure. While it would be more complex it shouldn't be too many times more complex than the dime a dozen "IRC client in language X" or a REST interfaces.<p>Maybe I am wrong regarding traditional email though, is there a simple and easy DIY email stack around these days?
I don't think this is that surprising. A lot of those firms would already have large-ish engineering teams already but managing the complexity of the mail servers is just not a good use of that resource.<p>Mail is a mostly solved technical problem, and having 'better' mail servers than the next guy isn't going to put food on the table any more.
The comment there by Anonymous:<p>"Reminds me of this: "The Hostile Email Landscape," by Jody Ribton <a href="http://liminality.xyz/the-hostile-email-landscape/" rel="nofollow">http://liminality.xyz/the-hostile-email-landscape/</a><p>In summary: Start sending email from a new mail server and the established players will likely mark it as spam. Market captured."
Will be interesting times for EU startups when at the end of January 2016 model clauses and corporate bindings break down due to the 29 Working Group and EuGH decisions.
The people saying the software isn't that complex are missing the point. Everything's easy for the person who has never done it. Even if you include all of the DNS/SPF/DKIM garbage the initial setup can be done quickly. Then the support time sink begins. One person's outbound email bounced. Another person is getting too much spam. A third person is missing perfectly valid email because it keeps getting marked as spam. Third parties are complaining at you, or trying to hack you, or both. Oops, time to upgrade because of another TLS bug. You get the idea. Burning a couple of hours one time is no big deal. Burning half of someone's day, every day, is a problem.<p>Still, a lot of developers' addiction to gmail in particular continues to mystify me. I work on open source, so I don't care if people see what I put up on Google Drive for discussion, but there's no way I'd choose to put company-confidential email on a competitor's servers. Google competes with a lot of other companies. I guess infosec just isn't as important to some people as aesthetics.
The frustrating thing about this is that we're starting to see companies that make google accounts mandatory.<p>I've already been in the position of being told "make a google account or lose your job" once. I chose the job, I have rent to pay. But I really don't want a google account, and critically, I _do not_ agree with googles terms of use.<p>Unfortunately, there's no way for me to flag to google that I have made the account under duress, and thus I will be subject to their data fracking techniques against my will.<p>Facebook was talking a few years ago about developing Facebook for business, I can see that taking off like a rocket too.<p>I'd really like to see some federal level intervention on the topic of employers strong-arming employees into legally binding agreements with third parties.
Running a mail server isn't a black art. With projects like sovereign (on github), it's even easier.<p>Companies and people throw away their privacy so lightly - it shows a puzzling negligence.<p>The internet is at its strongest when it's decentralized. Stop using proprietary services when decentralized alternatives are readily available!<p>PS: I think Hillary Clinton did the right thing by running her own mail server, she shouldn't have used it for classified documents (if she did), however.
Not surprising at all.<p>Hands down, Google Apps (not Gmail) is the best hosted email service for businesses. That's why companies use it. It's so good that wasting precious engineering resources on reinventing the wheel makes absolute no sense whatsoever. Oh, and don't forget email deliverability, spam detection, and a slew of other features that your cobblestone of postfix, dovecot, and roundcube will never even come close to reaching feature parity with.
People focus on different priorities. I don't think it's hard to understand. They just care less about privacy. Scaling is more important to them. And your emails can be encrypted on your client side if you want to. Just make sure those encrypted emails aren't so suspicious that they want to crack them.