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

I really am at a loss to think of something that email as a standard (and SMTP as a protocol) is lacking that requires a replacement.

There are a lot of things that I would like from an email client, but almost all of that can be done over IMAP using an MUA, and that would allow interoperability with literally every other email server out there, no matter how old the software is.

Replacing e-mail (and/or SMTP) as we know it would be a change on the order of magnitude of IPv4 → IPv6, in terms of how disruptive it would be to daily operations and how much extra work it would require just to handle the changeover seamlessly.

Unfortunately they don't go into too much detail with what they hope to do[0], so I'm left with no understanding of what they want to do that's so advanced that it requires a new standard altogether.

[0] At first glance, everything they talk about can be done using IMAP and makes more sense to implement client-side than server-side/embedded into the protocol.

Sure, here are some ideas I'd like to see:

- Effortless encryption

- Verified identity

- Pull model rather than push model (like twitter, requires verified identity, would eliminate spam and work for many email addresses which you don't want to be public)

- Attachments which are uploaded once, not duplicated and sent over the network

- Better filtering (this one isn't bad currently, but can always be improved)

- Integration with other forms of messaging

- Better support for public messages like mailing lists or mass mailings, e.g. URIs for messages or parts thereof (attachments etc).

- Single signon (get rid of passwords on websites by producing an email replacement so awesome people use it as a central identity)

...etc. There are plenty of possibilities, and the ones at the top of this list I think would benefit a lot of people and make things like spam a lot harder.

I'm not sure this particular service is going to succeed (it reminds me of app.net in that it targets developers, which is probably a bad idea for mass-market tech), but there are plenty of things we could improve about email and email clients.