[jacooper]

I think the only reason people know about email supporting multiple providers is because its old, if email was made today, you bet its going to be centralized.

Heck people already scratch their heads when an email isn't hosted @gmail.com or @hotmail/outlook.com.

And the learning curve exists because unprofitable companies like Twitter and Reddit made centralization possible by burning money, the old internet was decentralized because centralization was impossible, it was too expensive.

If these failing companies die, federated services will be the mainstream again. But as long as there is money to be burned to try to make a poor business model out of social interaction, federation is never going to be able to compete.

[copperx]

> Heck people already scratch their heads when an email isn't hosted @gmail.com or @hotmail/outlook.com.

What people? Are they in the room with us right now?

Anyone that works at a small/medium/large company has an email address @company.com

[audiodude]

I've heard plenty of stories of people saying "my email is [e-mail]" and it being input by a customer rep as "[e-mail]@gmail.com". Or them asking "At gmail.com or hotmail?" and you have to explain "No, at fredsmith.com".

[_lnwk]

I use some Polish email provider - the amount of times websites say my email must not be valid because it's @[service].pl was way too high :(

[Pathogen-David]

Except most normal people don't use their corporate email address for personal stuff.

I've always used a custom domain for my main email addresses and whenever I've had to give it to someone else verbally it inevitably leads to some amount of confusion. At the very least they get thrown off by the fact that I didn't say gmail/outlook/yahoo after the @ and I have to repeat the domain name.

[nisegami]

>Except most normal people don't use their corporate email address for personal stuff.

This does not line up with what I've seen in the world.