This statement was delivered to the democratic side of the House Antitrust Subcommittee upon invitation on July 17, 2020 in the committee’s preparation for the forthcoming July 27, 2020 showdown with the Big Tech CEOs.
Two years ago, we got the audacious idea to take on Google, Microsoft, and Verizon to provide a new, fresh alternative to their email services. It’s been about 16 years since people were last excited about getting a new email address – Gmail was introduced in 2004 – and frankly, it shows. These legacy services have been virtually devoid of innovation for over a decade.
And why wouldn’t they be! They’ve already captured the market. Between Gmail, owned by Google, Hotmail/Outlook, owned by Microsoft, and AOL Mail/Yahoo Mail, owned by Verizon, you have about 85% of the US email market captured by three players. And out of that, Gmail alone is about 55 percentage points.
But! Despite this near-total capture by big tech, the underlying protocol of email is still just barely free and open. You don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to make a new email service. (Or so we thought.)
Fast forward millions of dollars in investment to June 15, 2020, which was the day we opened the doors to our new email service, and were met by every entrepreneur’s dream: amazing reviews and customers tripping over themselves to signup and pay for our product.