Mozilla Thunderbird Challenges Gmail With Its Own Email Service

No matter how much I hate Mozilla's new path, companies like this challenging big tech are bold and have a lot of courage. If I set aside my personal op opinions about Mozilla, I actually admire them for this. They can actually dent big tech with funding from big tech itself.
- I keep hearing a lot of negative comments about Mozilla lately. I’m wondering if this move is more in line with then just turning into another google rather than disrupting the marketplace.
  
  Google only checked out and cashed in after getting a monopoly. Mozilla let themselves fade into irrelevance.
  
  yeah, might seem good to have yet another choice, but it's an illusion
  
  yes but this takes time. its great to have alternatives in the meantime.
- For now, they're better than Google. I have some bad opinions about them, but anything better than Google competing with Google is an improvement.
  
  Yeah it’s not even close.
- ...and then join the big tech at some point.
- It's a saturated market and email is starting to disappear (it'll take years, but the signs are there).
  They'd be better using it on the browser and ditching other products.
  
  Email isn’t going anywhere. It’s the ipv4 of communication. You can list 100 things bad about it and none of it matters, too many things are now built on top of it, no competitor can possibly have a chance without first reimplementing email, and then they’re just adding extensions which everyone else ignores, and email continues.
  The more plausible threat to email is that it gets siloed into the top 5 or 6 providers and everyone else gets filtered out as spam (ie you need gmail, hotmail, etc or your emails will never reach anyone)
  
  No its never going to disappear. If you are referring to people using slack and chat apps, those are locked in walled gardens where your messages cant ever leave.
  Email can be moved anywhere easily.
  
  Email won't disappear sooner or later. It's a huge part of communication between companies, nonprofit, state, etc. It may be less between people or with consumers. But, it still is widely use otherwise.
  
  I'm curious, not bashing. What signs have you seen that lead you to believe email is dying?
  
  Any business2business or consumer2business communication will likely still happen over email for a very long time
  
  email is starting to disappear
  The fuck it is lol, do you have any idea how much email is used in literally everything? How old are you?

If this works out it might be a nice place to migrate to away from my self-hosted e-mail provided they eventually let you bring your own domain. Just sucks that e-mail is essentially the most secure thing you need to have since compromising that can compromise every account attached to the e-mail. That’s a lot of trust you need to instill in your e-mail host.
- I have fond memories of self-hosting a qmail setup for a long time, then eventually migrating to a postfix configuration, back in the day.
  Keeping up with spam filtering finally did me in.
  
  The spam filtering is painful. I kinda work around it by giving a unique e-mail for everything and of one starts getting spammed I just rid of that e-mail. Tends to give you advance warning of data breaches too since you’ll start seeing the spam come in before the announcement.
- You say you’re self hosting your email, how are you doing that?
  
  https://mailinabox.email/

I think it's incredibly important that people know, with absolute certainty, whether or not the new Mozilla/Firefox privacy policy in any way applies to / covers such a service.
I'm not saying I know the answer- What I'm saying without a concrete, permanently applied answer it's not even considerable.
- There is no email service that exists without a terms of use and privacy policy. I still feel everyone overreacted about Firefox. It's funnier how many people said they switched to Brave because of it and all the super shady stuff Brave has done.
  
  at exists without a terms of use and privacy policy. I still feel everyone overreacted about Firefox. It’s funnier how many people said they switched to Brave because of it and all the super shady stuff Brave has done.
  Being angry at the Mozilla foundation for those changes is understandable. Switching to Brave because of it is plain stupid.
  
  Firefox/Mozilla operated without any of the new additions for nearly the entire history of the internet until this year. If anything, "over"-reacting to the new policies was too weak a reaction. You do you and all, but I'll agree to very strongly disagree.
- You can't know that with absolute certainty. Sorry, but if you're using someone elses server for your communications and they're not end to end encrypted, you should just assume that they can and do read your emails, and act accordingly.
  
  Mine is E2EE.
- What is it that you're concerned about? Assume that I have no idea what either the new or old Mozilla privacy policy is, please. I tend to assume that all such are a pack of lies and everything is spying on me.
  
  https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-firefox-i-loved-is-gone-how-to-protect-your-privacy-on-it-now/
  That article says it better than I can in s short post. Firefox's terms of use/privacy policy went over like a lead balloon last month.

I was thinking ab this being april fool bcz it's posted on 1st...
- Google announced Gmail on April 1

Thunderbird Pro will apparently be:
This email thing plus Thunderbird Send (which is basically https://send.vis.ee/), Thunderbird Appointment - a scheduling tool and Thunderbird Assist, which is:
"...at least for now, being cautiously labeled as “an experiment” that will allow users to take advantage of AI features within their email. However, the goal is to be lightweight enough that the language models can be run locally on a user’s PC in the interest of privacy. This service is being developed in partnership with Flower AI, which leverages Nvidia’s confidential compute to provide private remote processing in the event a user’s PC isn’t powerful enough. Sipes emphasizes that any remote processing features attached to Thunderbird Assist will always be optional, in the interest of ensuring complete user privacy."
So AI shit that nobody asked for or wants.
- This covers my thoughts about damn near every "helpful" feature this side of auto-complete email addresses.
  
  They said it will be opt-in and are trying to make it local-first. Their provider(?) apparently allows fallback to nvidia cloud compute when the hardware can't handle it.
  I'm not using AI to write my fucking emails, regardless. Just wanted to let people know.
  p.s. Sorry, I'm dumb, skipped over quote in parent comment. Point is, there's more to the service than optional AI bullshit, and you shouldn't have to disable it.
- "[...] This service is being developed in partnership with Flower AI, which leverages Nvidia’s confidential compute to provide private remote processing in the event a user’s PC isn’t powerful enough. Sipes emphasizes that any remote processing features attached to Thunderbird Assist will always be optional, in the interest of ensuring complete user privacy.”
  That's a lot of words to say "we made an AI that totally won't suck up your data, trust me bro"
  
  "nvidia's confidential compute" had me choke when reading it. Sure bro, sure.
- This sounds like proton except I haven’t heard a thing about cost or encryption which leads me to believe you will pay with your data and there will be no encryption.
  Proton is the bare minimum for email services. Email should be fully redone at its core.

- Tbh because it was the one shared on Reddit. Though if you have the right browser extensions when I wouldn't worry about it too much.
  
  Upvoted for honesty lol.
- You imply OP knows how to read & they read the whole article and noticed the source. 💀
- I went looking for something official but couldn't find it.

Here's what I want.... I leave a computer on at home and it checks my email. I get emails from it at my phone. No setup. Make it work like Sinkthing used to work. I don't want cloud anything. Fucking backup nightmare where my shit ends up kidnapped by a company for monthly ransom.
- if it's anything like gmail, they'd offer imap so you can set it up in thunderbird and download your messages locally.
- Syncthing still works like that. It’s completely self hostable. I have it on a pi 1B+ lol
  
  I have it but it eats up battery on the phones and the Dev left so it's probably going to go caput at some point.
  
  Syncthing was only ever self-hosted...
- Sooo... where will be your email server then? On your home computer?
  
  At home but separate computer with reverse proxy.

I hope to god one day the developers at Mozilla finally get tired of this shit and fork everything under a new org.
Fuck off with more services and give me my integrated FTP client back. No one who uses Mozilla software wants more cloud shit or online services from Mozilla.
- lol @ ftp client
- integrated FTP client
  Why though? SFTP is leagues better.
  
  For transfers between systems you own yes, but when grabbing a Linux iso from a public server FTP works fine.
  For years Firefox allowed you to crawl FTP sites natively.
- No one who uses Mozilla software wants more cloud shit or online services from Mozilla.
  I don't think that's unanimous. I'd like to use Firefox Relay, myself, and I'm willing to give thundermail a chance.
  Used to think I'd go full Proton eventually, but leaning more towards a diverse set of service providers, nowadays. It's also my hope that these services allow Mozilla to depend less on companies like Google, and more on the users they ought to serve, which would be healthier for the org and better for users.

I have a 20ish year old history in my Gmail account organized in labels and all that. I wonder if it will be viable to migrate?
- Considering labels are very non-standard, which caused trouble over IMAP since forever, I wouldn't count on that part.
  
  Labels are displayed as folders on IMAP, which means that a single message could appear in multiple folders. Are there any other problems you're talking about?
- Please archive shit. It's OK to save old data, but not on the service. There are ways. Even banks, the most obsessive and legally strapped data hoarders keep their 5+ year old data in deep cold storage, away from the active services. 99.9^% of information that old won't be looked at by anyone.
  
  Not true.
  It’s much easier to keep old data in active storage where it can be classified, searched, and have retention/deletion policies applied. Moving it elsewhere makes it more likely you’ll just hang onto it forever while not using it at all.

welp I signed up for the waitlist.
I'll use it for a disposable email at first, and if it endures and does well I'll move my main shit off to it.

I'm listening...
But how is a small non-profit going to afford a free email service? Ads in every email?
- Based on what I've seen in their forums it will be a paid service. I think it will be free at first for beta testers but I assume they are targeting people who currently use services like Proton.
  
  Thanks for the info.
  But I think they'll still need an ad driven free version to gain acceptance.

If its not zero access its just more ameritech bullshit.

Doesn't like 90% of Mozilla's funding come from Google? At least expanding their paid services could be seen as trying to turn that around.
- The anti-monopoly lawsuit against Google fixed that
  https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-potential-loser-google-antitrust-search-ruling/
  Now Mozilla has to find a way to offset that loss, which would be attracting the non-Firefox market
  
  Nice! Good for them.
- From my understanding thunbird is somewhat separated from this. From the article linked by OP it says:
  What’s crystal clear is that Thunderbird’s ever-increasing donation revenue (currently its sole source of income) is allowing for some explosive growth that’s long overdue. To add some context to this, Thunderbird received $2.8 million in donation revenue during 2021. Two years later, in 2023, it received $8.6 million in donations. I’m told that total financial contributions for 2024 were even higher, though the final amount hasn’t been officially released.
  
  I should donate again. As someone who still depends on gmail, I keep forgetting how annoying it was to get ads every time I refreshed my inbox, before I switched to their app. Glad things seem to be working out.

- Yes, sort of. Thundermail addresses, apparently, or bring your own. From the linked article you're commenting on:
  Users can send and receive email using new Thundermail accounts they sign up for. The service will also allow using your own custom domain (e.g. your.name@yourdomain.com).
  
  You have always been able to use your own domain email with Thunderbird. The big news here is the fact that they are launching not only a web based mail service a la Thunderbird but also providing an email server for addresses of [yourchosenname]@thundermail.com. which is gonna be pretty great.

I'd consider it. If they host things outside of the US/start moving operations overseas, it'd be a lot more interesting. I sub to Proton for email, VPN, and drive support. Still hoping someday for proper Linux drive support so Mozilla/Thunderbird can target that

Archive link for anyone else for whom that article crashed their tab.

I looked at this but it asked me to download it. Can I access it through a browser like I can Google?

Sounded great until the "assist" ai feature. I friggin hate Gemini in gmail so any other kind of ai is an automatic nogo for me

Thundermail… yeah yeah. :gently pushes my aol.com account under the sofa:

Lol sure destroy all the trust with your users THEN launch an email service. Hard pass fro me.
I guarantee you they're already planning to train an LLM on everybody's emails, or at least sell them to AI companies doing training.

Yet thunderbird still can't single click open an email in a new window. If I recall correctly the request has been filed in 2014 or smt 💀
- Nope, still requires double click.
  It's almost like you didn't read my comment and went straight to angry. This has been suggested for years with 0 response from Thunderbird team and there's no way to extend it without forking and patching everything yourself.

So the Mozilla Foundation is gonna waste google money on email infrastructure? Hmmm... 'k... it's not like their browser could use some love...
- Thunderbird's corp (MZLA) does not get Google money so far as i'm aware. It is a different subsidiary corp from Firefox's Mozilla Corp.
- are you implying firefox is in a state of neglect?
  
  I personally would love profiles akin to how Chrome does it.
  Edit: a word
  
  No there yet but not getting the love it deserved either.
  Maybe they oughta try asking for money like Wikipedia and KDE, maybe then they could become independent from Google and focus on actually developing a quality browser instead of making every app be about profit.

People still use Email???
- the entire world.
  
  If only they could develop a federated short message system.
  Messenger/WhatsApp/slack messaging style but federated like email
- Tf else would you you even use
  
  "The fucking blockhain" - some cryptobro
  
  I sent three faxes today 😎
  
  "My ENTERPRISE runs on WhatsAppp/SquareTeams/Discord/Slack" etc etc....
  Of course that works until that "enterpise" needs to send invoices, and get invoices.
  
  fax
  
  Xwitter?
- You are like those people that always say "Do people still use INPUT SOMETHING". Do you text or call only? What about your work? you call or send a text instead of email ? maybe drop of some files instead of emailing them? I have so many questions.
- mostly people with jobs
- Tell me you have no meaningful impact on the world without telling me you have no meaningful impact on the world.
- The people who dont are usually old as people who dont need it anymore or kids