How do you even see a chat bubble in that? It's clearly a mail icon, the new Thunderbird icon is just taking a design cue from the modern Firefox logo.
The silhouette of the white part with the envelope is in the shape of a chat bubble.
The shape that the mail icon/envelope sits in looks like a very cleverly designed chat bubble/single quote mark.
I almost included in another comment that I was impressed they made this less subtle (so logo nerds aren’t the only ones who can see it) without ruining its subtlety. If you look at the space between the tail and beak you’ll probably see the rest.
Yes, sure, that wasn't lost on me - but that's not screaming "chat bubble". ;P
I’m genuinely curious! What does the shape look like to you instead? I could see a highly stylized single quote character, which would be just as fitting.
It does in the launcher image where the bird becomes an indistinct blue ring around the bubble.
Yeah, I guess it's still an envelope too, since the flap is still there. Pretty clever.
The monochrome version ("Android Adaptive") makes the bubble clear. The envelope flap just looks confusing in that context though.
Thunderbird has supported chat for over 10 years since version 15.