Comment by sunshine-o
2 days ago
Unless they pull out something really cool and revolutionary this is probably just a fax machine.
Outside of the corporate world email is almost a legacy protocol. Like phone numbers we have one because we need to but do not really use it that much anymore.
I believe email was de facto replaced by WhatsApp, iMessage, Social media and OpenID almost 20 years ago.
Just ask a gen Z or Alpha when was the last time he sent an email.
Now they are gonna try to ride the wave of the Big bad tech escape but Proton has a 10 years lead here.
OpenID certainly hasn't replaced email. Young people still all need email to sign up for ~anything online - not to mention things like job/school applications or plenty of other real-world things.
What email has become is an identifier and a receptacle for notices. It's not a social platform for young people. But it's very much a thing!
Yes we agree, email has become an identity used to sign up for things (usually through OpenID) and a notification center. But few are keeping in touch with their friends through email, this is not 1998 "You got mail" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan anymore.
Notice that as an ID and in the last 10 years it had the compete again with the phone number that has become mandatory to sign up to a lot of services like WhatsApp, Twitter, Clubhouse, Tinder, etc. to limit fake accounts.
Also digital government ID are now being rolled out so email will become less and less central for work, school applications and "real world" services.
So yes I am curious why Mozilla believe email will save them, but I keep an open mind they might have an idea.
Email is used everywhere from account management, subscription services, school, and generally every single employer or client I've ever worked with. Sometimes I work with clients through SMS, Signal or Discord but we still fall back to email for certain things.