> Instead of developing opinionated software with a simple interface, GPG was written to be as powerful and flexible as possible. It’s up to the user whether th

> Instead of developing opinionated software with a simple interface, GPG was written to be as powerful and flexible as possible. It’s up to the user whether the underlying cipher is SERPENT or IDEA or TwoFish. IMO GPG doesn't owe its lack of widespread adoption to its flexibility, learning curve, code cruft, forward secrecy, or anything of the sort. Its various usability issues do not preclude the creation of an opinionated and easy-to-use GUI front-end. Corporations like Google and the government want to read your email. They could invest in private email communication but they choose not to. Arguably the network effects of widespread adoption of Gmail/Yahoo/etc even stifle folks pushing for GPG adoption. While Gmail claims they no longer "read" your email contents for ad purposes, your ISP most likely does[1], and no doubt Google still uses the data for something. According to Gilens et al[4], large corporations greatly influence policy decisions, and now we have the entire Western world trying[2] (and sometimes succeeding[3]) to effectively outlaw private communications. FastMail made a (thin) argument against using GPG[5], citing various problems (like losing key = losing email, and email search becomes hard). They also wax on some "transmit your key" nonsense. However, none of this seems to stop ProtonMail from making excellent use of GPG. The OP envisions a future, better GPG where we "start fresh with a different design philosophy" that includes things like forward secrecy. IMO global adoption is equally as important as the technology under the hood. Even if we started with GPG and upgraded to a new protocol later, the tooling, integrations, and ecosystem would benefit. 1. https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/house-votes-to-allow-internet-service-providers-to-sell-share-your-personal-information/ https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/house-votes-to-a... 2. https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix-without-backdoors https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix... 3. https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryption-law-is-a-threat-to-global-privacy/ https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryptio... 4. https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi... 5. https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/10/why-we-dont-offer-pgp/ https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/10/why-we-dont-offer-pgp/ 6. https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-brown-pgp-pfs-03 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-brown-pgp-pfs-03