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MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

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Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#101

Post by gmisra »

grinich wrote: post #21
Agathos wrote: post #10

“Inbox is an email company. Google is an advertising company. This product is our focus, and will not be ‘discontinued’ unexpectedly.” Burn! Very amusing. But for all we know they will be acqui-hired, maybe even by Google, and then shifted to a different project.

I said this in the other thread and I know it sounds cliché, but we're not planning to "go away" or get acquired or something. We've always positioned this company as a long-term play, and made that very clear when hiring, raising money, etc. It's just not possible to go after something big if you plan to "flip" the company quickly.

The strongest statement you can make to this effect is to preferentially take _my_ money over VC money. Words on this particular subject have been reduced to having no value with most people.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#102

Post by BinaryIdiot »

I guess I'm a little confused here. As far as I can tell this isn't an email platform; it's a service that wraps IMAP and POP and exposes RESTful services.

The grand claims in the text makes me think they're going to provide something that replaces email addresses and provides a better protocol than IMAP but that's not what's going on as far as I can tell.

Am I missing anything? I'm not trying to be an ass and IMAP and POP suck to deal with but there are hundreds of libraries that do it with very little work required. IMAP should certainly be replaced with something better but I don't see a proposal for such a thing.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#103

Post by rosser »

unfunco wrote: post #29
rosser wrote: post #16

Right, so now all of my email can go through some third party's systems. That's exactly what we need in a post-Snowden world.

It's on GitHub, you can self-host it if you wanted to. It's not a service yet .

Because self-hosting a mail service is totally something my mom can do...

(As the sibling comment notes, I'm talking from the perspective of the end user, not that of a technologist. We need to remember who we're ultimately building these things for...)

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#104

Post by wldcordeiro »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #68
wldcordeiro wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in action. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Disagree. It's harsh to make a point that there is no evidence they're telling the truth, not to be edgy or get attention. It would be better without the 'shut up' but a bit of an 'angry' tone is fitting. Really, I'm more uncomfortable with a link to a webcomic joke as an argument point...

I'm just citing where I got the 'theory.' The OP of the comment could have made their point just fine without being confrontational or 'angry' as you put it. I don't see why people are defending someone's rudeness, you can get your point across without being a jerk about it.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#105

Post by wldcordeiro »

pessimizer wrote: post #95
Dylan16807 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. It's harsh to make a point that there is no evidence they're telling the truth, not to be edgy or get attention. It would be better without the 'shut up' but a bit of an 'angry' tone is fitting. Really, I'm more uncomfortable with a link to a webcomic joke as an argument point...

It's not even an argument point, but just being used as a way to call someone a name without owning it.

No it isn't. If I want to call the poster a fuckwad, I'll call him one. The only reason I linked the comic is because it may not be common knowledge to everyone where the 'theory' is from.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#106

Post by pfraze »

thejosh wrote: post #45
kenster07 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the angry tone of this message to be misplaced and unnecessary.

Not really. If someone claims that their service will not be discontinued, unless they can offer some sort of agreement then it's worthless. Not like they can't shutdown their company irrespective of any promises.

How about building it to be self-hosted and releasing under the AGPL license?

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#107

Post by grinich »

GuiA wrote: post #91
grinich wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Michael from Inbox here.) Ouch. We're just a few hackers trying to fix broken developer tools. Any claim is just a claim, for sure. We know that it's a long road to earn trust of other developers. One of the (many) reasons we made the sync engine open source was so that developers could run it on their own metal without trusting us. Transparency is really important to us. This is just the beta announcement of our AP…

> Ouch. We're just a few hackers trying to fix broken developer tools. And we (gwillen and anyone who agrees with his comment, myself included) are just a few hackers who are tired of having the rug pulled under their feet when $CORP inevitably comes with the big bucks and all claims made by the founders in the early days of the company mysteriously disappear from the homepage. Talk is cheap.

I like to think that shipping code is the best argument.

https://github.com/inboxapp/inbox

But yeah, I totally understand the lousy feeling of being burned when $STARTUP gets acquired or shut down.

Wish I could say more to quell your concerns. We're just going to keep working on this every day to earn respect from developers. We don't take it lightly.

/edit

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#108

Post by programminggeek »

Agathos wrote: post #10

“Inbox is an email company. Google is an advertising company. This product is our focus, and will not be ‘discontinued’ unexpectedly.” Burn! Very amusing. But for all we know they will be acqui-hired, maybe even by Google, and then shifted to a different project.

This got people talking. It's a smart angle to get noticed and to get press.

The goal is not to beat Google, it's to not run out of money and die as a company. To that end, taking a swing at Google is a smart move.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#109

Post by FreezerburnV »

grinich wrote: post #60
alexobenauer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides syncing to a device, inboxapp stores a copy of a person's mail data on the server side?

Yes, for caching+performance reasons.

Do you encrypt anything in that case? Or do things in such a way that no rogue employee of Inbox would be able to read someone's email?

I work with email currently, and one of the core mantras we have is that nobody should be able to read the email of someone who uses our service. It's such a personal thing with so much private information, that even the possibility of someone being able to do that (especially when there are more than a handful of us) is unpalatable to everyone here, to the point that we can't do common password recovery in order to keep that information private from us. I certainly hope you are/will take that into consideration as you build this.

Re: MIT And Dropbox Alums Launch Inbox, a Next-Generation Email Platform

#110

Post by [deleted] »

thejosh wrote: post #45
kenster07 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the angry tone of this message to be misplaced and unnecessary.

Not really. If someone claims that their service will not be discontinued, unless they can offer some sort of agreement then it's worthless. Not like they can't shutdown their company irrespective of any promises.

[deleted]
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