Elon Musk wants to challenge the most popular email providers on the planet, like Gmail and Hotmail. These decades-old services, which are owned by Google and Microsoft respectively, boast a combined user base of roughly 2 billion people worldwide.
Little is known about the incoming competitor from the world's richest man, except a name.
Known as Xmail, it’s unclear whether the email service will be tied to X — the rebrand given to Twitter following its acquisition by Musk — or whether the “X” moniker will just be shared across a suite of separate products produced by the multi-billionaire.
It’s coming
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2024
Elon Musk confirmed the forthcoming launch in a public reply to Nathan McGrady, who serves as a senior member of the security engineering team at X. McGrady recently tweeted “When we making XMail?”.
Elon Musk replied to the tweet, stating: "It's coming"
Unfortunately, that’s all we know.
As we've seen a few times during Elon Musk's tenure at X, major products or alterations to the service can be teased or outright announced with very little information or fanfare. The two-word tweet doesn't reveal anything about how development of the email service is progressing, whether Xmail has been on a roadmap for the social media company for some time — or whether it's a new idea.
And there's no indication of when people should expect to be able to start testing this Gmail competitor.
Before you get too excited about the idea of ditching Gmail or Hotmail, it's worth noting that there's no guarantee Xmail — if or when it arrives — will be open to everyone, like its closest competition. Elon Musk has introduced three paid tiers of social network X, dubbed Basic, Premium, and Premium+.
These subscriptions, which are charged monthly, unlock a number of additional features. It’s possible Xmail could be launched as another perk for paid subscribers. It might only be available as a paid product, making it a tough sell as a Gmail alternative for many.
Elon Musk, who also runs SpaceX and The Boring Company, has previously spoken about modelling X on WeChat — a popular mobile app that dominates in China by bundling together functionality like messaging, social media, payments, and much more. The app, which is developed and operated by Tencent, boasts over a billion users.
Elon Musk is the owner of X, as well as serving as Chief Executive Officer for SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company. He also works with OpenAI and Neuralink
REUTERS
Musk has talked openly about ambitions to overhaul X into an “everything app” too. This ambition is referenced by fans of the 52-year-old entrepreneur in the replies to his announcement on X.
"you guys did say the everything app," one user posted. Another referenced the idea of Elon Musk bringing a number of popular services into a single app, writing: "X mail, X search, X pay, X home"
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Gmail is far and away the most popular email service available, with over 1.5 billion users worldwide. The email service costs nothing to set up and use, however, Google will count messages and media stored in the inbox towards your cloud storage allowance.
