Internet e-mail: Could we start over?

Users complain bitterly about e-mail's perils, but technopundits like to point out that the Internet wasn't designed with privacy, security and commerce in mind. What we need is a brand-new Internet -- new technology from top to bottom, some say. Two of the people who built the Internet in the 1970s have differing views on that idea.

"I think it would be a very useful exercise to ask what a 'clean sheet' Internet would look like," says Vinton Cerf, chief Internet evangelist at Google and co-inventor of TCP/IP. "Whether it is possible to implement is a different question. Just trying to introduce IPv6 has been tough. On the other hand, the Internet was introduced at a time when the telephone's circuit-switched network and point-to-point data links were basically all the tools available. Who is to say that starting over is impossible?"

Ray Tomlinson would. "It's nonsense; I can't see how that could even be done," says the man who invented network e-mail. "I can see little enclaves building up within corporations, for example, that are using some other technology, especially corporations that have multiple sites and are using things going over the base Internet. They might choose to have an alternative network for that, but they are still going to have connections to the standard Internet."

The morphing of e-mail

Gary Anthes talked with longtime e-mail analyst Sara Radicati, president of The Radicati Group. She says e-mail won't die; it will grow up.

Who's winning the war between e-mail users and the purveyors of spam, phishing scams and malware?

I think we are winning a little bit. We are making some headway, and people have adjusted to it as a fact of life.

Will individuals or companies give up on e-mail?

We don't see that at all. It's like saying you won't have a phone at home because you get marketing calls.

Will unified messaging take off?

It's the idea that you should have one mailbox where you consolidate your voice mail, e-mail, IM and everything lse. Only a fraction of corporations have it at this point because it tends to have pretty high price points, and there are compatibility issues with existing systems. It can cost US$300 to US$400 per person, and that's a lot just so users don't have to go two places for their messages.

How about Web-based e-mail?

We see it expanding dramatically. Most people have one or two Web mail accounts, for personal or business or both. We are seeing more corporations looking at those backup accounts to see if they can be legitimate, corporate-endorsed backup accounts. Some are even looking at these for primary accounts.

Doesn't that raise all kinds of security, privacy and control concerns?

Those concerns are not necessarily well-founded. Some companies are just very conservative, and some are open-minded.

What other trends do you see?

We expect to see much more integration between e-mail, IM and wireless communication. That's the next big wave over the next two to three years.

How about the client side?

That's been pretty static for eight to 10 years. I'd expect to see e-mail clients that provide better search capabilities and better conversation-organizing capabilities that help us deal with the large amounts of e-mail on different subjects.