Final: The Increasing Unpopularity of Emails

Over the past few years, email as a whole has become widely unpopular as a result of new and improved technology that has made it easier for people to communicate in areas such as their job or personal lives. Before the creation of email domains, people communicated through the use of a fax machine and later on through writing letters.  In 1775, the U.S. Postal System was created and gave a faster way to send letters. It introduced a new method to write to people and ensured that they received the letter. A few years later, the fax machine was created in 1842 by Alexander Bain and allowed people to send messages and drawings within seconds, by scanning the original copy of the document onto the machine itself. In today’s society, fax machines are more popular in businesses as a file sharing process. The history of email began in 1972 when Ray Tomlinson picked the @ symbol from the computer keyboard to represent sending messages from one  computer to another. As a result of this new step for email, the first important email standard was developed called SMTP, Simple Message Transfer Protocol. It was easy to navigate, but was not as successful due to its naïve protocol which involved not attempting to find out whether the person sending a message via email, was the person they alleged to be. Forgery is an important downfall in email addresses because it is simple to produce/imitate someone’s email address and send scam-like emails to their family, friends, and co-workers.

Throughout the years, many email domains have made their appearance and have remained successful until a course of events or a lack of being able to keep up with the growing and improved technological world has caused them to fail. One of those email domains was AOL, which began in 1989 in Dulles, Virginia when Quantum Computer services launched its first instant messaging service. In 1991, Quantum renames itself America Online, but by April 3, 2006, the name America Online was shortened to AOL. AOL was one of the first companies to establish a strong sense of community among its users through buddy lists and instant messaging services, which transmit billions of messages daily. AOL offered users from across the world numerous services such as; email, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), AOL video, video search, news, sports, weather, stock quotes, and Map Quest used for directions. After discovering the many successes that AOL as a company has experienced, it was surprising that it also went through a severe downfall. An important reason why AOL failed would be that while the world changed with time, they didn’t. As a company, you have to consistently work to stay five steps ahead of the technological world because it is growing and improving daily. If the services that you provide are not able to compete successfully with newer technologies/services, they will fall into the past and the company will not make enough revenue to stay alive. Also, once AOL acquired a considerable amount of customers, they weren’t interested in rapidly evolving their business model to move away from the required separate application to connect to the Internet. They allowed their success in gaining millions of users make them comfortable as a company which is another reason why they failed because they were not putting in the work to advance and expand their services and their purpose as a company.

Another email domain that was widely popular and was used by millions of people across the world was Yahoo! Yahoo an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,”  was founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo. Yahoo began as a simple collection of Yang and Filo’s favorite Websites. It was initially called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” Before there was ever a Google or Facebook, Yahoo was what you call “the king of the internet.” It included features such as a search engine, an email service, a directory, and a news branch. Also provides users with online utilities, information, and access to other Web sites. Yahoo! is now owned by Verizon Communications since 2017 because Yahoo! began to develop growing financial struggles and the efforts to turn the company around through hiring new CEO’s was not successful. Verizon Communications purchased the company for $4.48 billion. However, it is important to note that many apps that we enjoy were either invented at Yahoo or took a settling there. Some examples include before YouTube, there was Broadcast, before Evernote, there was Yahoo Notebook, before Spotify, there was Yahoo Music etc.  Yahoo unfortunately failed even though it is still around because it took several losses in numerous opportunities such as purchasing well-known companies like Google, YouTube, eBay, Facebook. Also, it suffered as a result of the dot com crash in April 2000, and never fully recovered. The dot com crash involved people with a lot of money looking for a quick way to get even richer by giving money  to any company that had some creative idea to dominate some area of the Internet–selling toys online, virtual newscasters, etc. The plan was for the companies to give away something for free in order to gain popularity amongst the people in order to gain publicity for their company and the service. However, this failed because the companies were giving away free things, but were not making revenue in return to keep up with the money being given by the wealthy people, so they stopped investing in those companies. If Yahoo was able to purchase these well-known and now widely popular companies, it would have remained at the top of the email domain world.

The third email domain that was popular in the past was Hotmail. Hotmail was founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. It was later taken over by Microsoft in 1997 for approximately $400 million and is now known as Outlook. Hotmail was one of the first services to offer free web-based email in the world. It became popular and differentiated itself from other email domains because it worked completely online through its web page instead of users having to download a software specially designed to use an email account. The overall theme the creators wanted to accomplish was to have it be an email service that would be simple, secure, completely free and easy to access from any computer having an internet connection and browser, working completely online. Hotmail was the first email domain to do many things such as offer safety innovations like anti-virus scanning for attachments. Hotmail introduced the calendar service, spell check, web messenger, search etc. On April 3, 2013 Hotmail transitioned to Outlook which in turn forced users to upgrade to Outlook.com while maintaining their @hotmail.com email addresses, password, messages, folders, contacts etc. Hotmail failed as a result of the rise of Gmail because it couldn’t keep up with the newer services and aesthetic of Gmail. An interesting quotation states that “Gmail is to Hotmail, what Android is to Windows Mobile.” Microsoft purchasing the company and transitioning it to Outlook was the reason its usage grew larger and expanded to more people.

Gmail is currently the only email domain that is dominating in the email world. It has knocked off popular email companies from their high places on the ladder with its better, slicker, easier to use, and more useful services. Gmail was launched on April 1, 2004 by Paul Buchheit. It differentiated itself with its limitless storage, fast services, instant search and other advanced features. It may have been the first major cloud-based app that was capable of replacing conventional PC software, not just complementing it. The fact that Gmail began with a search feature that was far better than anything offered by the major email services profoundly shaped its character. It’s main focus on its search engine set it apart from Yahoo, Excite, Lycos and other search pioneers that had reworked themselves as “portals,” expanding to everything from weather to sports to games. Portals had a reputation for doing many things, but not necessarily doing them all that well, which can show why many of the past popular email domains failed and fell off the grid. Gmail was a big deal because even though other free email services such as Yahoo and Hotmail were around, they were slow and offered limited storage and clunky services. Also, it includes popular features within Google Drive such as Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides which are used my many students around the world to complete assignments. Gmail also has a very effective program to filter out spam and unwanted emails that aren’t considered spam. Overall, Gmail is capable of keeping up with the growing/improving world of technology, and that is the main reason it will possibly be the only email domain that will remain dominant for years to come.

It is estimated that within the next five years, email will become totally obsolete because email has become less and less important even in the workplace. Businesses are beginning to move away from email as a primary form of digital communication because you can now send a quick text message or a DM on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Emails are inconvenient because sometimes people don’t respond or they take long to respond. Also, the process of having to go through each individual email to read a delete each ones is tedious and time consuming. The future of emails can include a more personalized take such as automated replies. There will be a virtual assistant for google that reads emails that are sent to you and generates a reply, so that you won’t have to sit there and reply. This virtual assistant will also automatically delete emails from businesses that are considered spam to you, so you don’t have to sit there and delete them one by one which eliminates the time consuming process. It is predicted that a new communication channel will replace email in the upcoming years, but will it be possible to replace Gmail? The progression over the next few years will prove detrimental to the email world.

Sources Cited

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “AOL.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 5 Oct. 2018, www.britannica.com/topic/AOL.

“U.S. Postal System Established.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 24 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-postal-system-established.

Brandon, John. “Why Email Will Be Obsolete by 2020.” Inc.com, Inc., 16 Apr. 2015, www.inc.com/john-brandon/why-email-will-be-obsolete-by-2020.html.

“A Brief History of Hotmail.” IndianWeb2.Com, 13 Sept. 2013, www.indianweb2.com/2010/01/07/a-brief-history-of-hotmail/.

Tynan, Dan. “The Glory That Was Yahoo.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 20 Mar. 2018, www.fastcompany.com/40544277/the-glory-that-was-yahoo.

1 comments

  1. Great paper and I agree with you completely that email is falling off the map as far as the chosen communication medium for the younger generation. I like the assistant idea of it only sending you the emails that seem very important, and ignoring the rest. That would definitely save us a lot of time in the future.

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