USA fallen behind in Email?

[jeffpan]

First, I want to state that I have no regional prejudice and I love the United States. However, it seems that Americans haven't made many breakthroughs in email innovation. There are only a few major providers like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo/AOL, and iCloud, which is rather uninspiring. In comparison, Europe has a congregation of email service providers. Besides local giants like GMX, mail.com, free.fr, libero.it, and Yandex, there are numerous smaller ESPs. For example, Mailfence, Inbox.eu, Proton, Tuta, Startmail, Runbox, mailbox.org, Posteo, Memail, etc. Not to mention a series of left-wing email services are based in Europe, such as disroot, autistici, systemausfall, and systemli. As a leader in the Internet industry, has the United States fallen behind in email innovation?

[janusz]

The number of tiny copycat European email providers does not prove they are innovative. Admittedly it's difficult to beat Gmail for innovations...
Some providers offer email in national languages, which is a non-issue in the US
Free.fr is an unfortunate example, as it's a telecommunications company, which doesn't offer free-for-all email service.

[dryoldlime]

The nice big ones available are GMail, AOL, Yahoo, Outlook/MSN/Hotmail, and internationally still available are Proton, Mail.com, maybe some more. GMail allows many coordinated Google services; AOL and Yahoo are old but still good and reliable; I do not feel uninspired.

[chrisretusn]

Seriously how much more innovation does email need?

[TenFour]

Between Gmail, Outlook.com, and Apple mail, which account for probably 90% of the emails flying around the world, there has been plenty of innovation. They are all pushing passkeys, which not a lot of email providers do. Apple recently introduced domain email for iCloud customers, Gmail is about to come out with masked one-off email addresses, and Outlook,com provides a full suite of online Microsoft Office services that provides a full office suite. Then we've also got smaller providers doing stuff in their own niches. I love Purelymail's focus on simplicity and low cost for domain emails--unlimited domains, mailboxes, addresses for only $10 per year. Some love MXRoute's many offerings. Zoho has a parent company from India, but they also host many services here in the USA. Fastmail's main servers are here in the USA too. Remember Skiff? They had a cool thing going, but bowed out. Now Notion is doing something with the old email stuff from Skiff. Then there's Hey. Don't forget DuckDuckGo's free anonymous email forwarding. I could go on...

[RFK]

You do not need innovations in email. You need stability, reliability, good spam filters and support of POP/IMAP/SMTP. You need some perks like forwarding etc, but, in general, Email is mature.

By the way, there are also mail.com and juno.com in USA.
Another thing, email services are not bound to one country. Everybody in the World can use email from any country (with a few exceptions).

Next, these non-US providers are small (except gmx.com) and with a few paid exceptions (Protonmail, Runbox, Fastmail) I would not rely critical tasks on them.

Indian Zoho: it is paid provider (free accounts are very limited) and should not be compared to Gmail/Yahoo/Outlook.com

Russian Mail.ru and Mail.ru: their usage outside Russia is very limited because of their hard link to cell phone number and SMS is not reliable option for them because of sanctions (SMS verification messages are not delivered very frequently unless you have RU or KZ cell phone).
In addition to this, I do not like the idea that Comrade Colonel from FSB reads my emails.

Today, I am not aware of any country that have more than 3 major email providers except the USA.

USA: The main four are Gmail, Outlook.com/Hotmail, Yahoo/AOL, iCloud (Apple). There are also mail.com and juno.com but they are much smaller and juno/netzero is looks like something from 2000. Let's count it as 1/2 provider. If we count mail.com (half-German/half-US) than USA has 5.5 email services for population of about 340M people.

Czech Republic: seznam.cz as a major one.
Russia has 2.5: Yandex, Mail.ru (and Rambler that could be counted as a 1/2 provider, you must have RU cell phone). 140M country has only three email providers, no single small provider
Ukraine: one main provider (ukr.net) and 3 small providers: i.ua, ex.ua, meta.ua. All of them actually limited to the owners of Ukrainian cell phone numbers.
Israel: only one: walla.com (limited to owners of Israeli phone numbers), no small providers.
Latvia: inbox.lv, I am not aware of minor providers.

Europe and the rest of the World: gmx.com as a major one for general public, a few minor providers like Runbox, Protonmail, Fastmail, Vivaldi, Fastmail (some of them are paid) and many really small providers that general public can't rely on them at all (they can disappear in any given moment).

As you can see, no one has more than 3 major email services.

I do not know what is going on in India and China: they may have more than three because of their population of 1.5 B people.


P.S.: for those who do not know: Yahoo and AOL are the same. It is one service with two main domains yahoo.com and aol.com.

[chrisretusn]

Originally Posted by RFK

You do not need innovations in email. You need stability, reliability, good spam filters and support of POP/IMAP/SMTP. You need some perks like forwarding etc, but, in general, Email is mature.

This is my main take on email. I'd like to emphasize "good spam filters" or least an option to turn it off and let me handle spam. A show stopper for me is lack of support for POP3/IMAP/SMTP.

[dojyx]

I too agree that a solid spam filter combined with good email search skills would be my preferred option.

I use Thunderbird (IMAP/POP3) to receive newsletters and other emails because I don't care about searching.

[chrisretusn]

I use Claws Mail.

[just1acc]

Originally Posted by RFK

I do not know what is going on in India and China: they may have more than three because of their population of 1.5 B people.

P.S.: for those who do not know: Yahoo and AOL are the same. It is one service with two main domains yahoo.com and aol.com.

India is Google, Google, Google. Apart from ZOHO, no professional email service I have seen (if you exclude Hotmail's origin). Reddifmail is distance second.

Originally Posted by RFK

P.S.: for those who do not know: Yahoo and AOL are the same. It is one service with two main domains yahoo.com and aol.com.

Yahoo and AOL use to be different provider and umbrella of company. Then selling/merger happened.

On May 3, 2021, Verizon announced it would sell Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. On September 1, 2021, AOL became part of the new Yahoo! Inc.

[dryoldlime]

said from RFK,

P.S.: for those who do not know: Yahoo and AOL are the same. It is one service with two main domains yahoo.com and aol.com.

Being reminded of the situation, one still must use AOL site to sign into AOL account and must still use Yahoo site to sign into Yahoo account. Also the two different parts do not look alike.

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by chrisretusn

I use Claws Mail.

That’s an email client, not a service.

[chrisretusn]

Originally Posted by Berenburger

That?s an email client, not a service.

Wow! Really!

I was responding to dojyx post.

[webecedarian]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

First, I want to state that I have no regional prejudice and I love the United States. However, it seems that Americans haven't made many breakthroughs in email innovation. There are only a few major providers like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo/AOL, and iCloud, which is rather uninspiring. In comparison, Europe has a congregation of email service providers. Besides local giants like GMX, mail.com, free.fr, libero.it, and Yandex, there are numerous smaller ESPs. For example, Mailfence, Inbox.eu, Proton, Tuta, Startmail, Runbox, mailbox.org, Posteo, Memail, etc. Not to mention a series of left-wing email services are based in Europe, such as disroot, autistici, systemausfall, and systemli. As a leader in the Internet industry, has the United States fallen behind in email innovation?

That's an EXTREMELY interesting question, because from there you can launch into a bigger question:

If a company or a country is on top with control of a massive amount of business, is there much incentive for big breakthroughs or innovation?

I don't know how much of the world's email traffic is Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo, but I'll bet it's much more than the others you mention.

It seems to me that many of the others you mention are known for a substantial commitment to privacy. My impression is that the "big three" have no interest in privacy but try to suck up as much information as they can. Gmail apparently interacts with Google, and Outlook apparently interacts with Bing. Why would they give that up?