The difference is in marketing. Gmail is a service with its own official app and so on. Matrix is a protcol, you can't market a protocol to regular people. Othe

The difference is in marketing. Gmail is a service with its own official app and so on. Matrix is a protcol, you can't market a protocol to regular people. Other than techies, nobody cares how their chat works as long it works so if you want to gain traction you market Element as the new hot messaging app and not Matrix the protocol.