> as email looks to be as niche of a product category as Premium IRC It's another feature checkbox among other features... and few even really consider it a hi

> as email looks to be as niche of a product category as Premium IRC It's another feature checkbox among other features... and few even really consider it a high priority feature. For Google/MS commercial options include an office suite, even if the cheaper options are web only, which is still a pretty good value add. Not to mention network effect on "free" versions. It's very hard to compete with a perception of free is what it comes down to. In the end, most people aren't afraid of their government spying on them with an "I've got nothing to hide" attitude about it. Prior to Snowden's leaks, my own thoughts were there was too much data to do anything with, I was deeply wrong. In the end, if you wanted to compete, you'd have to get a web office suite at least better than Google Docs and undercut both Google and MS on price. Or maybe go the Apple route and provide best of breed integration and apps... unfortunately there's money to be made and competing with MS and Google would be very difficult. I'm not sure there's enough support for open-source to aid a startup to have a self and commercially hosted option... of course then there's the AWS path where they're suddenly offering your software and undercutting you.