In light of the release of an email exchange between Donald Trump Jr. and a lawyer representing the interests of the Russian government, as well as the numerous hacking incidents, the position of email as a secure and private form of messaging is threatened.
All these factors ultimately culminate in one, potentially revolutionary question: has email been rendered obsolete?
This isn't the first time the credibility of emails has been questioned in a world that is increasingly places a higher emphasis on security and privacy. Last year, during the presidential election in the U.S., Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton fell prey to the vulnerability of the emailing system, as did the Democratic National Committee itself.
Even though email companies like Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) are attempting to revamp their services in an effort to attract and retain more users, it doesn't change the fact that security remains an issue. Yahoo was "famously plagued by two massive security breaches affecting more than a billion users, which ended up knocking $350 million off the asking price for the Verizon/Yahoo deal that closed in June for $4.5 billion." Moreover, in June, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) itself suffered a data breach, tarnishing all its subsidiaries names as well.
Besides Verizon's acquisition of Yahoo already entailing the elimination of AT&T (NYSE: T) email addresses' access to Yahoo Mail, it has also cut off users from Flickr and Tumblr which further disincentives people from using the service.
It is therefore only logical that big companies, startups and even small organizations like university clubs and support groups are employing encrypted messaging apps like Slack and WhatsApp (NASDAQ: FB) to communicate instead. These applications have a host of features that emails don't, including instantaneous messaging features, easier facilitation of group communication, private channels and most importantly, a high level of security entailing messages that cannot be leaked or hacked into.
If one actually thinks about it, the only reason people still use email is convention- emails are more 'formal', so to speak, and they are the go-to form of office communication simply due to precedent. Yet, it has been more than 50 years since the inception of email and the style of communication that accompanies it. Moving away from it could help revolutionize the very foundation and organization of communication in professional work spaces itself. Messaging is faster and less formal: free-form messaging could lead to an atmosphere of openness that could be more conducive to innovation and creativity. As the usage of email has grown, so has the bureaucracy associated with it; a bureaucracy that is slowing things down in this fast-paced world.
Most recently, Gmail (NASDAQ: GOOGL) also announced that it would stop displaying ads that were based on the content of users' messages in an attempt to quell privacy concerns. Gmail is also planning to make its newest version more customizable, with better sorting and filtering options. However, all of these features can also be implemented in encrypted messaging apps, especially if the market for email users is absorbed by these companies.
The fact of the matter is, email services the world over are just not doing enough to be able to warrant overcoming the concerns about hacks and leaks that everyone has on their mind. Not to mention the amplification in spam or junk emails that point to the failure of these archaic emailing technologies' filtering processes, a problem that is less seen in encrypted messaging apps. Email may just be a dying form, and businesses globally are beginning to realize this.