I think there is a valid point hidden inside this flame-bait. GMail (and other web-based email clients) are making inroads against traditional desktop email cli

I think there is a valid point hidden inside this flame-bait. GMail (and other web-based email clients) are making inroads against traditional desktop email clients. I used Thunderbird for a long time, but just found GMail's client much more intuitive and faster. The best part is that web apps are getting faster and faster as JS engines improve. This isn't the case for desktop clients, at least from my experience. Bloat always sneak up on you. Sure, this happens on web apps too (e.g. Google Wave), but it doesn't feel as bad because we're used to web apps being "slow" (only to get faster the next year). For desktop clients, once you're bloated then you pretty much stay that way. I loved Thunderbird and I was excited about Thunderbird 3, but really, I don't see a reason why I would want to leave GMail. Of course, I'm not using "enterprise" email for work or anything. But even enterprise email will be web-based eventually.