2014: Every 'Email Killer' Has Failed: Slack, Wave, Facebook, and More
In May 2009, Google unveiled Wave at its I/O developer conference with the kind of fanfare normally reserved for moon landings. Lars Rasmussen, one of the creators of Google Maps, demonstrated a platform that combined email, instant messaging, collaboration, and document editing into a single real-time interface. “This is what email would look like if it were invented today,” the team declared.
Fifteen months later, Google killed Wave. It wasn’t the first product promoted as the death of email, and it certainly wasn’t the last. But Wave’s spectacular failure established a pattern that has repeated with remarkable consistency: someone declares email is dead, launches a replacement, and email continues sending 350 billion messages per day without noticing.
The Graveyard
The list of products that were going to replace email is long, expensive, and often embarrassing for the companies involved.
Google Wave (2009-2010): Real-time collaborative messaging that was supposed to merge email, chat, and documents. Users found it confusing, the interface was overwhelming, and nobody could explain what it actually was. Killed after 15 months. Cost: undisclosed, but significant given the engineering talent involved (the Google Maps team).
Facebook Messages (2010): Mark Zuckerberg personally announced Facebook’s unified messaging system, which combined chat, SMS, and email into a single inbox. The press immediately dubbed it the “Gmail killer.” Facebook even offered @facebook.com email addresses. Usage was minimal. The email addresses were quietly discontinued in 2014.
Google Allo (2016-2019): A messaging app that Google positioned as a smart alternative to email and traditional texting. It launched to modest reviews, failed to gain traction against iMessage and WhatsApp, and was shut down in March 2019. Google had approximately 13 messaging products at various points, none of which killed email.
Slack (2013-present): Perhaps the most credible “email killer” ever launched. Stewart Butterfield’s team communication platform genuinely reduced internal email volume at companies that adopted it. But Slack didn’t replace email — it replaced a specific subset of email (internal team messages) while leaving external communication, transactional messages, newsletters, and formal correspondence untouched. Slack itself sends copious amounts of email for notifications.
Microsoft Teams (2017-present): Microsoft’s answer to Slack followed the same pattern — it reduced internal email at organizations that adopted it but did nothing to eliminate email for everything else. Microsoft, of course, simultaneously operates Outlook, one of the world’s largest email services.
Hey.com (2020): Basecamp launched Hey as a reimagined email service that would fix everything wrong with email. It offered innovative features like sender screening and organized inboxes. It generated significant buzz at launch but has remained a niche product. Notably, Hey didn’t try to replace email — it tried to make email better. Even the most ambitious email critics acknowledged they couldn’t kill the protocol.
Why Email Won’t Die
Every failed email killer shares the same fatal flaw: they’re products competing against a protocol. The distinction matters enormously.
Email is an open protocol. SMTP, the standard that moves email between servers, is an open standard that anyone can implement. Gmail users can email Outlook users can email Yahoo users can email someone running their own server in their basement. No single company controls email. No one can shut it off.
Replacements are proprietary platforms. Slack users can only message other Slack users. Teams users can only message other Teams users. To use any email replacement, both sender and recipient must be on the same platform. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem that no challenger has solved: the platform isn’t useful until everyone’s on it, but nobody wants to join until everyone else is already there.
Email is universal by default. Every person with an internet presence has an email address. You can’t create a Google account, an Amazon account, a bank account, or an account on virtually any online service without an email address. Email is the universal identity layer of the internet, and no messaging app has come close to that ubiquity.
The Unbundling Argument
The more sophisticated version of the “email killer” argument doesn’t claim that one product will replace email. Instead, it argues that email is being unbundled — different use cases migrating to specialized tools that handle them better.
There’s truth in this. Internal team communication has partially moved to Slack and Teams. Quick personal messages have moved to texting and WhatsApp. Group coordination has moved to group chats. File sharing has moved to cloud storage platforms. Each of these migrations has reduced the volume of email sent for specific purposes.
But the unbundling argument actually strengthens email’s position. After all the specialized use cases are peeled away, what remains in email? The stuff nothing else can do:
- External communication with people outside your organization
- Formal correspondence that needs a paper trail
- Transactional messages triggered by user actions
- Newsletters and marketing from brands and creators
- Universal identity for account creation and password recovery
These aren’t the low-value leftovers. They’re the core functions that drive commerce, communication, and authentication across the internet. Email has been “unbundled” down to its most essential, most valuable, most irreplaceable functions.
The Numbers
If email were dying, the numbers would show it. They show the opposite:
- 2015: ~4.0 billion email accounts worldwide
- 2018: ~4.1 billion
- 2020: ~4.3 billion
- 2023: ~4.5 billion
- 2025: ~4.7 billion (estimated)
Daily email volume has grown from approximately 200 billion messages in 2015 to over 350 billion in 2025. Email marketing revenue continues to grow at 10-15% annually. The newsletter economy, which barely existed in 2015, is now a multi-billion-dollar industry.
Every time a new communication tool launches, tech journalists write think pieces about email’s impending death. Every time, email’s response is the same: it sends another 350 billion messages and doesn’t bother to reply.
The takeaway for marketers is clear: invest in email. It’s not going anywhere. Start with a great subject line — our Subject Line Grader can help — and build from there.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why can't anything replace email?
Email is an open protocol, not a product. Anyone can send email to anyone, regardless of which service they use. Replacement platforms are proprietary — Slack users can only message other Slack users. This universal interoperability is email's unbeatable advantage.
What happened to Google Wave?
Google Wave launched in May 2009 as a real-time collaboration platform meant to replace email. It was confusingly designed, had limited adoption, and was discontinued in August 2010 — just 15 months after launch. It remains one of Google's most notable product failures.
Will email ever be replaced?
Email has survived every challenger for over 50 years because of its open, decentralized protocol, universal interoperability, and the simple fact that no single company controls it. While specific use cases have migrated to other tools, email as a universal communication layer shows no signs of being replaced.