Email Will Never Die - The Man Who Invented It Reveals Why

The reason that "email" will never die is that the limitations of the human mind compel user interface designers to employ the principle of least surprise and to extend existing metaphors slowly. In practice, many people are using "email" which runs on internal Exchange systems and is accessed using Outlook or web applications. When I send an email via Gmail on my "phone" (Which is as much a camera that can make calls as it is a telephone that can take pictures - the only reason we use one metaphor and not the other is path dependence) to someone else using Gmail, I am "sending them an email" without using the protocols that the original implementers of email had in mind.

It's the same reason that we can call a web site a "page" or a "document" despite the fact that a modern web site is actually several programs running insider your browser (flash, custom JS, HTML rendering) working together with programs running on a number of different servers. That's nothing like a paper document, but we use the metaphor because it's been extended a little bit at a time.

Email can only be replaced by another system which does not require you to be on any particular network (decentralized).

Email doesn't die because gmail can send to hotmail and to every other domain.

The entrepreneurs trying to replace it will focus their effort on one exclusive platform which they know they could monetize if they hit a tipping point. Unfortunately, the very motivation to profit is what creates the biggest problem.

The only true solution to email is a decentralized system, that many other companies could utilize. Unfortunately, once you have a system which is easy to create competitors you get instant commoditization. Once you have that, the economics of the idea suck which means that VC, and other investment money will never chase that system. In other words, a decentralized system is worthless from the idea stage due to the expectation of commoditization.

That is why email is “unlikely” to be replaced.

Oh, so V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai did not invent email? ;)

I've been saying for a while that the only problem with email is one of management. As the volume of incoming emails increases we need better tools to avoid a similar increase in the amount of time we spend checking it.

To that end (shameless plug) some friends and I have been building Lightermail to solve this problem for us. We're getting close to opening the service up to a wider pool of private beta users and would love to have some HN users and their feedback in the mix. If interested head over to https://lightermail.com and we'll be sure to get back to you in the next couple weeks with an invite code.

How long did it take for the traditional post office to die? It didn't die even after the arrival of FedEx or DHLs.

Email is a basic and all inclusive communication method. People later on have added and tagged along their businesses to ride on the same method. Those who are facebooking, tweetering, chatting, texting, etc, are still communicating on the same basic principle which binds the email.

However, headlines like "email will never die" or "email is dead" are as stupid as they can be.

I suspect that the people who have been calling the death of email have never worked in enterprise.

I believe GMail already does the chat <-> email conversation quite seamlessly

I thought the inventor of Email was this guy: http://www.inventorofemail.com/