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The three worst things about email, and how to fix them

Washington Post – You’ve got (too much) mail! A buzzy new service called Hey isn’t for everyone, but helps us see how we lost control of Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo Mail. Apologies if you’ve been waiting for an email from me. My Gmail has 17,539 unread messages. Raise your hand if you have even more. For many, Gmail accounts have become less communication space and more of an endless pile Google gets to snoop through. Pandemic life has only made digging through the coupons, Zoom invites, newsletters and school assignments more fraught. A lot of important conversations have shifted to text, WhatsApp, Slack and Facebook, but that hasn’t done away with email … or made not responding any less impolite. Most consumer tech gets better over time. Why doesn’t email? I’ve gotten some perspective on that over the past month by testing a new consumer email service called Hey. It wants us to declare Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo Mail bankruptcy to start over with a new address, radical new organizational ideas — and pay $100 per year for it. Hey attracted 185,000 sign-ups in its first four weeks, and it’s been a moderate success for me. After forwarding my personal Gmail account into Hey, instead of 75 to 100 emails to confront every day, I now get 10 to 20…”

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