[jasode]

>Email was meant to be kept simple, [...] instead of trying to come up with a new email, stop breaking the current one, and keep using it.

The "email was meant to be kept simple" can't be stated in isolation. Many suffering recipients of email see the outside world stuffing their inbox as making "email complicated". They can't control how others misuse email.

Paul Graham explained that email has become overwhelming for him and his peers.[1]

What's your recommendation for their pain points with the current email system?

[1] from 7m29s to 11m50s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI&feature=youtu.be...

[cup-of-tea]

It seems like he's talking about a very specific use of email. I can't be the only person who actually writes letters to people using email and not expecting anything to end up on their "todo list".

[jasode]

>I can't be the only person who actually writes letters to people using email and not expecting anything to end up on their "todo list".

Many like you definitely exist but your "pure 100% communications only" usage isn't what the Gmail enhancements (that many dislike) were trying to solve.

The blog author, Avi Ashkenazi, wrote:

>From a business perspective I understand that there are more people using Gmail than Calendar, Keep or the new Tasks, but the way Google has attempted to bring people into the fold and have them use add-ons and the rest of their products is just crazy.

There is overlap between the non-communication features that Avi Ashkenazi mentioned and what Paul Graham is talking about. PG recommends creating a new and different protocol. Avi Ashkenazi is saying don't try to shoehorn things like "tasks" into the Gmail UI/UX because it makes it complicated. Google/Alphabet apparently is working from a different philosophical base: many people use Gmail as the central dashboard so let's put everything there.

[heavenlyblue]

The issue with this approach is that quite frankly - email by itself should be just like our water supply.

Better water exists, but it's not much better than the usual one. You can use water for many things, but it doesn't matter whose supply you're using.

E-mail must be kept that way: there's nothing to invent in terms of email itself. You can only invent on top of it. It's just like HTTP: HTTP/2 exists, but it doesn't change the idea of HTTP, it only evolves it.

[pmlnr]

Use CalDAV for tasks sync, keep email for communication?

Again, stop breaking it.

[jasode]

>, keep email for communication? Again, stop breaking it.

It's a matter of a different perspective and "breaking it" is in the eye of the beholder.

For many end users of email (and Google Inc's point-of-view apparently), it's the other users sending me emails that's "breaking it" beyond SMTP's original design intentions.

>Use CalDAV for tasks sync,

E.g. it's the other users who send "tasks" and "appointments" inside a freeform email instead of strictly using CalDAV. Their abuses of email has broken the SMTP system. If overloaded email usage by other humans who don't categorize what they send into strict protocols such as CalDAV is a fact of life, the Google response is to add some complexity to the UX/UI to let users conveniently copy paste it into the sidebars for Tasks and Calendar. Google may be wrong (as the blog post argues) but I think it's worth entertaining the idea that the multipurpose usage of email has already "broken email".

For many people, your suggestion of putting 17k of emails into a single namespace alongside other important emails is not acceptable. They want a UX/UI to make a first crude pass at filtering it into a hierarchy. This does have a negative side effect if "hiding" it from some users who don't notice it's there.