Email is a Winning Product
If you want to send a digital piece of mail, you use an email. It’s the best solution if you want to reach someone using the internet, and know their address. Email has been heavily meme’d, and challenged as new products (like Slack) have threatened to replace it. Nevertheless, email remains email. A true winning product.
Email follows the two design rules. The single primitive is simply an email. An email can be sent to one person or many. You can hide the people you send it to (BCC), or let everyone see the list of recipients. Email uses existing solutions: like text, images, and more recently markdown. You can send just text, or attach files like PDFs and pictures. You can hyperlink websites to visit.
Email is first in mind when communicating over the internet. And it’s used outside of spam marketing emails and the latest coupon for cat food. Email has become a unique identifier. You can leverage your email to sign in to online services, and as a recovery mechanism for online accounts. Email is an important part of your digital identity. What would happen if you completely lost access to your email?
Email could easily be dismissed as a commodity. A free product, a public good. This classification would make it a valuable asset for a company to leverage as a part of its business model. Google (Alphabet), currently the 4th largest publicly traded security, is the most popular email platform today. Google alone touts 1.8 billion users worldwide. Email is a winning product.