Simplify Simplify Simplify

Famously, when Gmail came along, Google told us to stop trying to organize (and delete) our email and instead just rely on search to find what we’re looking for. Broadly I’d say that approach has worked well, and in the vast majority of cases, I err on the side of risking losing track of something later instead of spending the time to organize it n

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What’s Google’s motive for providing free email? Is it that they just want people to be able to communicate easily with one another, or is it that a major advertising conglomerate with a twelve-figure annual revenue stands to benefit tremendously by consuming and using all of your inbound and outbound communication? In comparison, Fastmail is a com... See more

All this to say, email has soaked up many of the great things about the current web. It's pretty. It's convenient. Algorithms work over the raw feed to simplify the flow of information. Email, generally, is mobile-friendly and renders beautifully on all devices. These are the things that the current generation of web companies strive to accomplish.... See more

For all the changes occurring around email, the experience of email itself has been transformed, too. Email is not dying, but it is being unbundled.

While email's continued evolution is significant, what it has retained from the old web sets it apart from the other pretty, convenient apps. Email is an open, interoperable protocol. Someone can use Google's service, spin up a server of her own, or send messages through Microsoft's enterprise software. And yet all of these people can communicate s... See more

3. An email client is no monkey work