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{"id":6091,"date":"2022-05-18T15:18:18","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T15:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/05\/18\/skiff-mail-is-taking-on-gmail-by-betting-on-privacy-and-crypto\/"},"modified":"2022-05-18T15:18:21","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T15:18:21","slug":"skiff-mail-is-taking-on-gmail-by-betting-on-privacy-and-crypto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/05\/18\/skiff-mail-is-taking-on-gmail-by-betting-on-privacy-and-crypto\/","title":{"rendered":"Skiff Mail is taking on Gmail by betting on privacy \u2014 and crypto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/5\/17\/23075804\/skiff-mail-email-privacy<\/a>
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Skiff<\/a> has spent the last couple of years developing a privacy-focused, collaborative document editing platform that you could most succinctly describe as \u201cencrypted Google Docs.\u201d Now, it\u2019s coming for Gmail. The company is launching an email service called Skiff Mail that aims to be, well, encrypted Gmail \u2014 and eventually much more than that.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Skiff co-founder and CEO Andrew Milich says Skiff wants to build a complete workspace, something as sweeping and broad as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. But the only way to do that is to solve email, which is, in so many ways, the core of both platforms. \u201cIt\u2019s the most private corpus of our lives, you know?\u201d Milich says. In an effort to keep people\u2019s most important information safe \u2014 which includes doctors\u2019 notes, confirmation numbers, work emails, family chats, and everything else \u2014 he says email felt like a \u201clogical and critical next step.\u201d <\/p>\n

Email\u2019s also a potential growth hack for Skiff. \u201cIt\u2019s really, really hard to move off of a service you\u2019re using today when your main identity,\u201d Milich says, \u201cyour main communication layer, the way you\u2019re actually living on the internet, is outside of that.\u201d In other words, for every user going to Skiff Mail instead of Gmail, that\u2019s another person for whom Skiff\u2019s other products are just a click away. Right now, Skiff is free for personal use and makes money through business subscriptions; Milich didn\u2019t say what Skiff\u2019s plans are for email but said that advanced features will likely be paid ones down the road.<\/p>\n

Rather than reinvent the wheel and come up with some Hey-level new paradigm<\/a> for how email works, Skiff is starting fairly simple. The app right now, which works on web, Android, and iOS, looks like Gmail minus all the color and UI cruft. It\u2019s almost all text, with folders on the left and a reading view for your current message on the right. In other words, it\u2019s an email app \u2014 a pretty barebones one at that. Right now, there\u2019s no support for custom domains. You can\u2019t check your Gmail in Skiff, and there\u2019s not even much in the way of automation or organization tools. Milich says the simplicity is mostly by design: \u201cWe didn\u2019t go super-ambitious and say, like, \u2018We\u2019re going to reinvent email with a new set of inboxes, a new set of filter rules, a new set of templates.\u2019\u201d The goal instead was to make all the important stuff \u2014 text editing, search, managing attachments \u2014 work really well. <\/p>\n

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Skiff\u2019s email client is pretty basic for now, but that\u2019s by design.<\/em><\/figcaption>Image: Skiff<\/cite><\/p>\n

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That\u2019s not to say there\u2019s no ambition to Skiff Mail. It\u2019s just that Milich\u2019s whole theory is that this \u201cprivacy-first app\u201d strategy only works if people actually like using the apps. So many apps and services focused on privacy and security practically scream their values at you. The apps are harder to use, force you to manage more systems or click through a thousand warning messages, or just look like they were built by cryptographers rather than designers. (Because usually, they were!) One Skiff advisor told me many of these products look more like advocacy campaigns than competitive products. Skiff\u2019s trying to live all those same values: the company often publishes its research, and much of its code is open source \u2014 but in a much more user-friendly package. <\/p>\n

Get Milich talking long enough, though, and he\u2019ll start to veer into much funkier territory. One of Skiff\u2019s recent projects has been to integrate its document platform with the IPFS protocol, a decentralized networking layer that users can now choose to use to store their data. Milich also has ideas about bringing Skiff Mail to the Web3 community. He imagines users with .ETH domain names using those addresses for totally encrypted and decentralized messaging, for instance, or maybe enabling wallet-to-wallet communication via MetaMask integration. \u201cEncryption and public key\/private keys are so much about what identity means at Skiff,\u201d Milich says, \u201cand it\u2019s also what we\u2019re seeing identity become in web3.\u201d <\/p>\n

There\u2019s increasing evidence that \u201cGmail but private\u201d is a compelling offer for many. Proton, the maker of ProtonMail, said last year that it has more than 50 million users<\/a>, while platforms like Fastmail and Librem Mail continue to grow as well. Gmail remains the behemoth in the market, effectively the only company that actually matters in email, but those looking for something different have more choices than ever.<\/p>\n

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