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Mozilla launching “Thundermail” email service to take on Gmail, Microsoft 365
- mentalgear 2y agoRooting for mozilla and their privacy-focused services. Been using the email-masking feature (generate forward email addresses) for a while and really like it.
- JadeNB 2y ago> Rooting for mozilla and their privacy-focused services. Been using the email-masking feature (generate forward email addresses) for a while and really like it. I don't know how the privacy of this one will shake out, but the privacy focus on the browser includes allowing them to share your data, so that makes me way less enthusiastic about continuing my investment in their ecosystem.
- glenstein 2y agoThey're trying to square the circle with anonymized data, but I think even that is still about profiling, and group profiling is only one degree less concerning than individually user profiling. So I don't love it, but I know how to differentiate it from the worst of the worst.
- theandrewbailey 2y agoThis is the best news I've heard of Mozilla in a long time.
- jmclnx 2y agoYes, and maybe timely with many Countries looking to wean themselves off US based. I wonder if this service can be segregated by region ? For example, can people in Europe use a service that is fully based in Europe.
- KomoD 2y agoYou know Mozilla is American right? There's no way for it to be "fully based in Europe" when Mozilla runs it.
- jmclnx 2y agoYes, but I would think there could be multiple services and storage.
- tmtvl 2y agoSomething like Kolab Now, you mean?
- jmclnx 2y agoI had to look it up, so maybe.
- basisword 2y ago>> For example, can people in Europe use a service that is fully based in Europe. As long as it's still owned by Mozilla it's subject to the whims of the US government. There are already many good European mail services (e.g. Proton Mail).
- sfRattan 2y agoI'm cautiously optimistic. It's certainly the most realistic business plan their leadership has put forward in a long time. And a Mozilla/Thunderbird based email service is well timed. Microsoft's upgrade (read: downgrade) of the newest version of Outlook, making it a glorified web app, has pissed of a lot of users who aren't the sort to browse hacker spaces but do have to use serious email and calendaring every day for their work. Even if those folks don't see Thunderbird as an alternative to what Outlook/Exchange was, it'll absolutely be an alternative to what Microsoft is turning Outlook into... [1][2][3] And there's something devilishly funny about the fact that, because DDG uses Bing on the backend, when I search for articles to cite... Everything that comes up trashing the new Outlook is from MSN. [1]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-new-outlook-for-windows-isn-t-worth-using-8-improvements-it-needs/ar-AA1qNZh9 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-new-outlook-fo... [2]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/windows-11-takes-small-step-to-fix-the-horrible-new-outlook-app/ar-AA1u5rgE https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/windows-11-takes-small-... [3]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/even-microsoft-s-ai-says-the-new-outlook-is-worse-than-mail-calendar-on-windows-11/ar-BB1ptHA3 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/even-microsoft-s-a...
- zie 2y agoI thought MSN was not owned by MS anymore, but turns out I was wrong. It's MSNBC that MS divested ownership in. MSN is still 100% owned by MS. At least they aren't filtering out bad MS news on MSN I guess.
- devwastaken 2y agoi would not get an email for a domain that will be up for sale in 10 years. mozilla is not a sustainable org and has lost its core principles. Mozilla best serves people by shutting down and letting younger and better orgs replace it.
- Loudergood 2y agoOnce I can bring my own domain, I'll be more interested.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 2y agoWhy does this matter? I can't pick my own domain when using Gmail, and still works just fine.
- ivanmontillam 2y agoIt matters because on your own domain you control the MX records (Mail eXchange) servers. So, if Mozilla Thundermail were to disappear, you can switch servers on the MX record to another email provider with little downtime if done correctly. You also become the sovereign of your email. Should your Google account get banned (a news like these hit HN once a month), you are left to start over changing email address in every service you use. Not to mention dead accesses to SSO, because the Google account would be inaccesible by then.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 2y agoI don't understand. You don't control any Mx records. You have an account with some company. You might lose it just like you might lose your Gmail account. Also... You can use Gmail with your own domain. I don't get the meme with mx records.
- ivanmontillam 2y ago> I don't understand. You don't control any Mx records. Yes, you do (on your own domain). > You have an account with some company. You might lose it just like you might lose your Gmail account. Yes, but if you use your own domain, the same account username can exist on another provider. I can still write you an email to "firstname[at]firstnamelastname.com" and reach you. As for the email messages, if you do email correctly (by downloading emails to a local email client, and then creating backups, or at the very least, using Google Takeout to export your mailbox regularly), you don't have to lose your email messages. > Also... You can use Gmail with your own domain. I don't get the meme with mx records. Exactly my point. By then, you use Google Workspace, which is an email provider to your own domain. If you wanted to switch to Microsoft 365, or Fastmail like I do, I am the sovereign of my email address. Nobody noticed I switched email providers when I changed from Google Workspace to Fastmail, and that's the point. To be able to dump the provider when you need to. Sovereignty. > Also... You can use Gmail with your own domain. I don't get the meme with mx records. Additional reply to this: To use that, you need to fiddle with MX records.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- stirlo 2y agohttps://thundermail.com https://thundermail.com Site is here with waitlist signup. It's also titled "For Those Who Know" and says: >> status beta_signup.is_open=true so perhaps theres a CLI or hidden way to signup immediately?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hnuser123456 2y agoThere's an input field for an email address below that block for me
- Kirby64 2y agoI had to disable uBlock Origin for that to show up.
- mystraline 2y agoTurns out, in Firefox mobile, the email submission block isn't present. I had to open Chrome Mobile to see it. I hope this, err, 'oversight' isn't indicative of the quality of using Mozilla products.
- riquito 2y agoUsing Firefox mobile too, it's visible. Could be one of your extensions
- munchler 2y agoI've tried to use Thunderbird multiple times over the years, but I always end up with a corrupted mailbox after a week or two, so I go back to Outlook. Is TB finally reliable enough to try again? I'd love to ditch Outlook, but I don't want to be a sucker. Update: OK, I'm trying it again.
- vasachi 2y agoMy coworker uses thunderbird since time immemorial, and I don’t think it ever corrupted his mailbox.
- spacechild1 2y agoI have been using Thunderbird myself for years and never had any such problems.
- timbit42 2y agoI've used Thunderbird for years and know half a dozen other people using it, including one who has folders with tens of thousands of emails, and have never heard of any data corruption.
- Avamander 2y agoThe only issue with "large" mailboxes is that Thunderbird tends to become really slow. But this issue plagues other desktop clients as well. I would love to find an actually performant email client. It shouldn't take like seconds to sort like 100 000 emails. It's a puny number. The time it takes one can read all the emails from disk a thousand times, it's sad.
- voltaireodactyl 2y agoOn Mac I’ve found MailMate to be excellent in this regard.
- Avamander 2y agoI'll check it out, thanks!
- brunoqc 2y agoMozilla, let me directly fund Firefox instead please.
- ice3 2y agoi wonder what the price will be and if it supports custom domains
- sylens 2y agoI hope this service will use JMAP and push the Thunderbird client itself to adopt it
- cycomanic 2y agoYes! I'm a fastmail user and every couple of months I do a survey of JMAP support and come back disappointed. Speaking about thunderbird, I liked their UI redesign, but it seems they are taking away quite a bit of plugin capabilities, e.g. there used to be the possibility to run firenvim (a plugin to run neovim in the compose window), but that's not possible anymore.
- adduc 2y ago> The final launch will be Thundermail, an email hosting service using the open-source Stalwart stack. Users will be able to pick between thundermail.com and tb.pro domains. If the article is correct, Thundermail will be built using Stalwart[1], which appears to support JMAP [1]: https://stalw.art/ https://stalw.art/
- hs86 2y agoIs it just JMAP, or why does Fastmail's web app feel so fast? I have moved away from all locally running mail apps to Fastmail and even fetch/alias all my other mail accounts to them because of the much better experience.
- sylens 2y agoProbably partially because of JMAP, partially because they have a single mission and know when to leave well enough alone
- cxr 2y agoBecause most working web developers actually have no idea how to write JS; they follow what is presented (perpetuated) as industry standard practice, but in a React-and-NPM world, "industry standard practice" means bad practices. Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24218967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24218967> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33794755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33794755>
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoEarlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43554197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43554197
- n42 2y agois there a future where Mozilla buys Kagi and becomes the privacy Google?
- technocratius 2y agoJust use Proton
- Avamander 2y agoProton says they care about security and privacy but at the same time makes it impossible to use your own keys or properly export the original emails from your inbox. I really can't take this suggestion seriously.
- kowabungalow 2y agoThat's not a good argument. The easiest way to undermine security of everyone is to allow portability of keys features. Look for example at where Signal fails and for no benefit to a normal user.
- Avamander 2y agoCurrent email encryption schemes provide no forward security, it's nothing like Signal. Key management has to work totally different. You're also wrong in the aspect that it would undermine something, you can absolutely export keys from Protonmail, you just can't use your own keys properly. You can't remove all the keys they have generated, you can't use your own client with your own keys, the bridge literally mucks it up. The defaults can be what they are, it's not mutually exclusive in any way. In the end this restriction undermines the security and privacy for everyone that want to use secure hardware storage. Which is absolutely insane for a service that boasts about these things.
- kowabungalow 2y agoI didn't critique their security model, I said you wanting greater convenience to exfiltrate keys and documents, even if its to a system that is more secure for you, is not arguing for better security and privacy in their product.
- the__alchemist 2y agoAs far as I can glean, this is a "me" problem, but does anyone else find Thunderbird's search to be mostly-broken? I.e., will not find emails that should turn up in a query.
- climb_stealth 2y agoIt helps to sort the results by date rather than relevance. Relevance is the default and the results are all over the place and it does indeed feel utterly broken :)
- cycomanic 2y agoI agree, the search is quite bad. The UI is bad and the results seem to be poor. I don't necessarily have the issue that emails are not in the results, but more that results are too numerous and the only way I can narrow down results is putting more constrains in the UI. What often happens for me is that I search using a several terms or some specific phrases and the search returns tons of results (does it just do an OR between words in the search) and I then end up clicking (why can't the time constraint be a slider?!) through different months (based on what I recall about the timeframe of the email) until I find the email. When I was using notmuch I recall results being much better. Another annoyance is that Thunderbird only seems to search locally, i.e. if I don't have some folders downloaded it will not do a server search as well as a local search (maybe there's a setting for it?)
- Avamander 2y agoI run grep on Thunderbird's storage directory and it's significantly faster than anything Thunderbird itself attempts. (It also allows finding exact matches, fuzzy search without language "awareness" is disgusting to use.)
- mmooss 2y agoThat's kind of the point of the Unix text stream philosophy? TB stores as text, and then you can use the best text search tool you have. Do you use mbox or maildir, out of curiosity?
- ttoinou 2y agoMake thunderbird supports a local database with 100k emails with proper search ! Make us pay for that optimization if needed. Email is a big tool of communication for all businesses, Pros who make money daily through emails need to handle tons of emails, we’re ready to pay for that
- Avamander 2y agoI mentioned the same problem in one other subthread as well. Current hardware is certainly performant enough not to become this sluggish at just 100 000 or so emails. There's actually no reason it shouldn't work well with say a million emails in one inbox.
- xnx 2y agoI haven't used Thunderbird in a long time, but regularly used Outlook with multi-gigabye .pst files. Surely sqlite on an SSD would be up to the task of handling at least million emails of average size.
- mmooss 2y ago> Outlook with multi-gigabye .pst files What has been your experience? Mine in trying to use and support it is that Outlook is an Exchange client; PSTs are hacks to meet demand, though they work well enough in limited circumstances. Especially PSTs over a LAN connection are a disaster.
- xnx 2y agoThe Exchange server hardware was so underpowered (or the software so ill-designed for large mailboxes) that Exchange powered searches would fail, but ones run on the local pst would complete successfully (if slowly). This was on an HDD. SSD would be much faster.
- mmooss 2y ago> This was on an HDD. SSD would be much faster. OT but is that right? SSDs have many advantages but sequential read isn't necessarily one of them. SSDs seek is much faster, but this is ~one file. Throughput can be much faster due to the better interfaces, but is throughput the bottleneck for this kind of search?
- inetknght 2y agoSo... after the Mozilla/Firefox EULA and TOS fiasco... there's no way in Hell that I'd touch this.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- intellectronica 2y agoIs this an April Fools leftover?..
- sandyarmstrong 2y agoGmail was also announced on April Fools'...
- timeon 2y agoWhere are the servers located?
- Y_Y 2y ago> >> philosophy > open_source & privacy_focused & user_controlled Is their philosophy a bit string? Or maybe this simple mistake of using a bitwise AND is what's gotten Mozilla's mission so corrupted these last many years.
- squiggleblaz 2y agoWhat else could it be but a bitwise AND. If they had used `open_source && privacy_focused && user_controlled`, it would just be `true`, which is hardly an interesting philosophy. This way, you'll be able to do tests like `if (!(philosophy & privacy_focused)) { track_user_activity(); serve_creepy_but_useless_ad_about_something_they_bought_yesterday(); }`. Alternatively, they could have used some kind of set datatype if the number of philosophy variables is large enough, but I think the code would have become unmaintainable if they want to implement every possible philosophical alternative; 64 bits should be enough for everyone.
- gruez 2y agoThe article is pretty light on details so I'm going to ask: why should I get this compared to something like fastmail or protonmail? Does it at least have end to end encryption? Is this just going to be a case of Mozilla partnering with another service provider (eg. mullvad for mozilla vpn), slapping their logo on it, and collecting a royalty?
- pgt 2y agoNever forget Mozilla’s stance on deplatforming & censorship (since scrubbed from Mozilla’s blog): https://web.archive.org/web/20210108215449/https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210108215449/https://blog.mozi...
- mvdtnz 2y agoThank you for sharing this, I was completely unaware that this was Mozilla's stance. This is shocking and disappointing to me.
- DecentShoes 2y agoJesus Christ. Maybe I will give in and switch to Chrome.
- Avamander 2y agoThose are absolutely fair requests. I sure hope people won't forget what happened then and why.
- glenstein 2y agoWow, I'm sorry to hear they took that down. It's a perfectly normal and rational request for accountability on January 6th, which actually I would say makes me feel more favorably about the company.
- sunshine-o 2y agoUnless they pull out something really cool and revolutionary this is probably just a fax machine. Outside of the corporate world email is almost a legacy protocol. Like phone numbers we have one because we need to but do not really use it that much anymore. I believe email was de facto replaced by WhatsApp, iMessage, Social media and OpenID almost 20 years ago. Just ask a gen Z or Alpha when was the last time he sent an email. Now they are gonna try to ride the wave of the Big bad tech escape but Proton has a 10 years lead here.
- mod50ack 2y agoOpenID certainly hasn't replaced email. Young people still all need email to sign up for ~anything online - not to mention things like job/school applications or plenty of other real-world things. What email has become is an identifier and a receptacle for notices. It's not a social platform for young people. But it's very much a thing!
- sunshine-o 2y agoYes we agree, email has become an identity used to sign up for things (usually through OpenID) and a notification center. But few are keeping in touch with their friends through email, this is not 1998 "You got mail" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan anymore. Notice that as an ID and in the last 10 years it had the compete again with the phone number that has become mandatory to sign up to a lot of services like WhatsApp, Twitter, Clubhouse, Tinder, etc. to limit fake accounts. Also digital government ID are now being rolled out so email will become less and less central for work, school applications and "real world" services. So yes I am curious why Mozilla believe email will save them, but I keep an open mind they might have an idea.
- soulofmischief 2y agoEmail is used everywhere from account management, subscription services, school, and generally every single employer or client I've ever worked with. Sometimes I work with clients through SMS, Signal or Discord but we still fall back to email for certain things.
- evolve2k 2y agoA few months ago I would have been excited and telling my friends. But no longer. I had long been an outspoken Firefox advocate in my city. Fix your trust issue. Trust once lost is not easily regained.
- mmooss 2y agoThat's not my point of view at all, and I have little issue with what happened and have no concern about Mozilla and privacy. The endless repetition of these comments is becoming spammy - they have nothing to say but the exact same thing again. We get it; you don't need to repeat it. It's like someone writing, at every opportunity, 'I don't trust Meta' and adding nothing more.
- olyjohn 2y agoI probably say this too much too, but it feels like just a justification to keep using shiny Chrome. Even though the recent ToS fiasco basically had the same language as Chrome's ToS, and wasn't really as bad as everybody freaked out about. People still just find whatever excuse. Like fine if you like Chrome, just admit you love Chrome because it's shiny.
- glenstein 2y agoExactly. I just feel like a point that originally was reasonable (around 2016 or so) became the spiraling echo chamber that became increasingly nonsensical and increasingly divorced from rhyme, reason, causation, logic, or proportionality. Case in point, Google Chrome has pushed web standards to consolidate its control over the web, but Firefox hid a cheeky reference to a TV show in its code one time! Those are incredibly different scales of offense.
- qu4z-2 2y agoYou don't understand why someone who uses Firefox specifically because of its stance on privacy would be upset that the ToS are being updated to be "basically [the] same language as Chrome's"? Chrome, as in Google, the biggest name in tracking and ad-tech? I haven't used Chrome since whenever they started logging you into the browser when you logged into GMail, and I'm sure most complaints about negative changes in Firefox come from long-standing Firefox users.
- mmooss 2y agoI hope for the best but plan for the worst: I don't think people want to change email addresses very often. How do I know Mozilla will still be doing this in 5-10 years? (Edit: Others have pointed out that, if we can bring our own domains, technical users can retain their address. However, for non-technical users that's not an option.) Also, I'm not sure about charging a fee at the start (except for TB contributors) and providing a free tier later - reverse of the usual way of launching a product. Maybe this is a soft launch to shake out the bugs and build a little momentum, and you can pay if you want to take part? Mozilla could do something awesome here. I hate to say it, but here is a chance to start fresh and make big, legacy-breaking changes to Thunderbird. The new audience - which should become the vast majority if they are successful - won't care if it's not like the old Thunderbird (possibly unlike many on HN). Here is a chance to do something special and the mail client is all most users see or understand.
- fracus 2y agoDo people still use Thunderbird client? I would guess 99% of people use their browser.
- rfarley04 2y agoI use it and feel like it's...fine. A tad slow, and doesn't have some basic features I'd like. But I haven't found any other non-browser clients that I like better than Thunderbird.
- makeitdouble 2y agoI think it's definitely a minority. I use it to follow three Gmail accounts in parallel, since the web version is a PITA to deal with that scenario. Getting access to my local archive is a bonus point.
- nektro 2y agoyes i exclusively use thunderbird to check my email
- mcflubbins 2y agoI use it for my email. It does exactly what I need it to, works across several platforms. Is Open Source.
- evolve2k 2y agoA few months ago I would have been excited and telling my friends and community. But no longer. My long term endorsement is over. Trust once lost is not easily regained. Fix your trust issue.
- tristan957 2y agoWhat trust issues do you have with MZLA Technologies, the organization that currently develops Thunderbird?
- 9283409232 2y agoMozilla should've been what Proton is. A company that sells privacy focused services. They went off chasing too many geese and now they are panicking. I don't think I would trust this service at this point.
- varispeed 2y agoMozilla is American and with what's going in the world, we need a service like Gmail served by non-US entity. Many businesses are looking away from US based services. If Mozilla moved headquarters to Switzerland, UK or Norway, then maybe it would make sense.
- palata 2y agoThere are email providers based in Switzerland. My current favourite provider is Migadu :-).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- iteratethis 2y ago"Sipes confirmed Mozilla would ultimately end up charging for the features" I totally understand why and it's fair, but if you want to take on gmail, you just lost. Google is dominant because most of its services are free.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoI'd love for that to be true, but Google through me out of their free tier a decade ago, and I've been paying various amounts for my wife and my accounts ever since.
- NegativeK 2y agoMaybe it doesn't work at Mozilla's scale, but a business doesn't need to take overtake Gmail to win.
- drdaeman 2y agoServices that take on Google can not just win over some user base but even become profitable (see Kagi's example), so it's not strictly about $0 price tag. But they gotta be really good (for some target audience), and the hard part is beating the already established offerings, of which there are plenty and covering for every kind of crowd I can think of. I wish MZLA luck, but given all the Mozilla Foundation history (which started amazing but is less than stellar in terms of recent PR) I'm quite skeptical.
- glenstein 2y agoI don't think the definition of success here has to be overtaking Gmail. In fact, I think that would be doomed to fail. Instead, you want to appeal to people willing to pay for an alternative, which I think is probably a real population of users and honestly one of Mozilla's best strategic moves in years.
- commandersaki 2y agoFor me the two big things to assess will be how it handles aliases / catch all aliases and search.
- soulofmischief 2y agoI love Thunderbird the platform, but I'm gonna pass on a paid service, I am extremely happy with Migadu as a personal email provider. https://migadu.com/ https://migadu.com/ Mozilla has lost all trust from me, the recent privacy policy fiasco was the straw that broke the camel's back.
- tristan957 2y agoThe Mozilla Corporation does not develop Thunderbird, so why even mention them in this thread. This is MZLA Technologies.
- soulofmischief 2y ago"Thunderbird operates in a separate, for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation." https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/about/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/about/ Guilty by association.
- nektro 2y agoanother dilution of mozilla's resources :/
- glenstein 2y agoI feel reasonably confident at this point, declaring this a myth. Mozilla absolutely made missteps and lost browser market share, but it had almost nothing to do with spending on side bets, if you look at the budget and you look at the numbers of these things. Most of the sidebets already happened after they lost the market share and did not happen at such prohibitive costs that they prevented them from investing in browser development. And there's no such thing as a missing browser feature they could have developed that would have recovered all of the market share, which they failed to develop because of a side bet. Nobody who repeats this has even looked at Mozilla's budget, or checked to see whether the side bets overlap with the time where Mozilla lost market share. The one exception to this is Firefox OS, which does appear to have used significant resources and happened during a critical time where they lost market share. And while that one at least would be a fair criticism where there's real data behind it, I actually respect it as a bold strategic move and personally deeply wished it worked out. But for whatever reason, a complete disconnection from factual reality has never stopped people from claiming that the VPN or the Mozilla Foundation or whatever was the problem.
- tristan957 2y agoMZLA Technologies is separate from the Mozilla Corporation.
- mcflubbins 2y ago> Thunderbird Pro Is this a late April fools joke?
- syntaxing 2y agoSeems like a Proton and Fastmail competitor more.
- addicted 2y agoThis is a step in the right direction. I worry it’s about 12 years too late. The decision to reduce focus on Thunderbird was remarkably mistimed with the email client market just shooting through the roof with a bunch of orivate players being acquired for tens and hundreds of millions right after.
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoA bit late to the party, but it's one of the best mail clients available.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoIf Mozilla didnt waste money on dumb things I would sign up, but they could have done this long ago, and they definitely waste their income on dumb things. Like what happened to making Firefox fully oxidized? That would have made Rust drastically more mature and proven.
- tristan957 2y agoThe Mozilla Corporation is not the organization behind this. It's MZLA Technologies, which is underneath the Mozilla Foundation. Firefox was never going to be fully ported to Rust, at least not in any short timespan. The amount of lies that get spread about the Mozilla Corporation and Firefox is insane. The fact that we continue to see it here in a thread about Thunderbird and MZLA Technologies is even crazier.
- glenstein 2y ago>If Mozilla didnt waste money on dumb things This has been repeated so many times that people seem to have forgotten they're supposed to actually make arguments to support it. There's no such thing as a missing browser feature that could have returned all the Firefox's market share that they were unable to make on account of spending on the VPN or acquiring Pocket or starting the VC fund or whatever. I don't know where this idea came from, but it seems to have been a mass collective hallucination. I have problems with dabbling in ad tech. I have problems with strategic vision. But I have more problems with people being confidently wrong in the backwaters of internet comment sections not even pretending to attach these claims to any factual basis whatsoever. I mean if you really want to go look at a recent 990 form from Mozilla, look at the amount spent on browser development, make your best guess as to what it costs to administer the VPN, then make the case that the money used on it represents money that could have been invested in the browser development, but wasn't, make the case for the missing feature that would have otherwise been there, and then make the case that that would have boosted Mozilla's market share back to 33%. Those are all the missing steps of actual logic and reasoning and causation that would be necessary to substantiate this argument. But bafflingly, everyone just repeats this while skipping all the steps.
- steveklabnik 2y ago
- a_bonobo 2y agoWhere will this data be hosted? There's no way I'm leaking even more data into the USA with the way US politics is going. From a different article: >Thundermail isn’t going to use your messages to train AI, it’s not going to invade your inbox with ads, and it’s not going to harvest and sell your data. And? We've seen with DOGE that they can just walk into any place and take your data, anyway. It's only safe if it's outside the US.
- guestbest 2y agoIt’s so seamless for chat to become the medium that we mostly communicate with this AI industry that it’s a shame email, which may have come about first, a little hazy on the history, email didn’t become the means of which we communicate with AI tools
- lblume 2y agoHow would email be able to express anything the chat interface cannot? Attachments, tools, and long-form content are all well-supported. Email allows for asynchronous communication but that is usually not seen as a benefit - when I talk to AI I want a ~instant response, not wait for someone to check their mailbox.
- rootsudo 2y agoalso competing with square and apple... I don't see how it's an effective product, if they released this 20 years ago at the advant of hotmail going downhill and the release of unlimited storage (lol) gmail it would've been a game changer since they had a client this whole time. But now, vendor lock in is strong w/ Microsoft and Outlook that I question do people even use Thunderbird? It was a great competitor to Outlook Express and 2003... but now.. I really don't know, but I guess their product managers think so. "The Thunderbird database says its number of active monthly installs has dropped from 17.7 million in late December 2020 to 16.2 million in late March 2025, with the mail app struggling to keep up with the industry’s main players like Gmail. With the launch of Thunderbird Pro, Mozilla is adding Thunderbird Appointment, a new scheduling tool for sharing calendar links; Thunderbird Send, a rebuild of the discontinued Firefox Send; and Thunderbird Assist, a new AI-powered writing tool enabled via a partnership with Flower AI that is intended to do the processing locally to eliminate privacy concerns. The final launch will be Thundermail, an email hosting service using the open-source Stalwart stack. Usrs will be able to pick between thundermail.com and tb.pro domains." I really don't see how this is a market changer, the market is stuffed with competitors and every domain registrar offers some form of email service too.
- dev_susan30 2y ago[dead]
- drdaeman 2y agoGame-changer... how? There are at least two players in email space that provide encrypted email and various auxiliary suites (Protonmail and Tuta), plus at least one well-trusted well-respected email service (Fastmail), and of course people can always self-host if they dare. What revolutionary they could possibly realistically bring in areas privacy and security to be an actual "game-changer"? Not saying it cannot possibly be - just that I cannot think of any novel way how it would deserve a title like this in such a particularly tricky niche as email suite service.
- FloatArtifact 2y agoWhen I helped people migrate to Thunderbird, the number one missing feature is simply the focused inbox provided by Gmail. Unfortunately it ends up being a deal breaker.
- tristan957 2y agoThis is an announcement by MZLA Technologies, not the Mozilla Corporation. This thread is completely derailing because people do not understand the difference. Let's actually discuss the service, Thunderbird, or MZLA Technologies.
- debugnik 2y agoTo be fair, Mozilla's org naming has proven itself confusing. Half my HN karma must be pointing out the difference between the Foundation and the Corporation when people talk about "donating to Firefox".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wwarner 2y agoI would be much happier to learn i could use tbird on my iphone.
- _blk 2y agoToo little, too late. Already happy with Proton since 5+ years and it keeps getting better. Enterprise mail was a mess back then, now it's doable. In 5 years it should be good.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- solarkraft 2y ago> using the open-source Stalwart stack This is REALLY cool news. This will make them the second JMAP compatible vendor and the first that didn’t invent it (which is an ick)! This makes it MUCH more interesting to build JMAP clients. I will most likely subscribe to this just to play around with JMAP because I‘ve been to lazy to set up Stalwart for myself. I wonder whether they will build a new web front-end, since the existing FOSS ones I’m aware of aren’t all that great.
- tianqi 2y ago> "Usrs will be able to pick between thundermail.com and tb.pro domains." It's not easy for me to believe that these domain names are chosen for email address by someone in the email business.
- pcdoodle 2y agoCringe name. Dooblydoo@thundermail.com
- abidhusain 2y agoA privacy-focused email service by Mozilla is a welcomed addition to the market! Given the ongoing concerns around data security, it's refreshing to see companies like Mozilla pushing for better privacy standards.
- 7bit 2y agoIt looks like data is stored on US server, which defeats all and any real attempts on true data privacy. But since the company is a US company it doesn't really matter where the data is, the feds will always have enforceable access.
- crossroadsguy 2y ago> Usrs will be able to pick between thundermail.com and tb.pro domains. That "Usrs" is not my typo. And what strange choices for domain names. Anyway I hope they launch a custom domain supporting paid email service (and not go skimpy on details and features like, e.g., Apple's iCloud).
- tiahura 2y agoOutlook allows several key productivity features that Thunderbird currently lacks. These include unified categories and tags across emails, events, contacts, and tasks; customizable views that consolidate all item types by category; the ability to drag emails or contacts directly into the calendar or task list to create new associated items; and precise control over reminder times for every item type. Without these integrated capabilities, Thunderbird cannot fully replicate Outlook’s seamless and interconnected workflow.
- dumbledoren 2y agoTook long enough. This was a long time coming.
- ferngodfather 2y ago> Thunderbird Send, a rebuild of the discontinued Firefox Send Ah yes, let's see if it can last longer than 18 months this time..
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- aiiizzz 2y agoPerfect move by Mozilla. Kudos.