Unified, Open Source, Cloud Email? Thunderbird Says It's Coming.

Only a day after I ranted about how Big Tech exploits our needs not to make our lives better but to lock us into their walled gardens, I stumbled into the news of the upcoming Thundermail service by the Mozilla Foundation. In my previous post, I gave task management for example as one of the areas of purposeful exploitation of our technology needs, but email isn't too far behind, in fact it's probably ahead of task management.

Email has been and will remain to be a problem. It's one of the most broken and dysfunctional technologies of the Internet, and yet one of the most crucial. From a security perspective, it's real, persistent and enduring vulnerability that will continue to plague individuals and organizations for many years to come.

Email is identified as the attack vector in 27% of breaches, according to the 2025 Verizon DBIR . This means 27% of cases started with email-based attacks, like phishing. which analyzed over 12,000 confirmed breaches. However, other studies suggest a range, with some estimating 15% for phishing-related breaches and others up to 35% for specific attack types like spear-phishing, showing some variation depending on the source and definition of "major incidents."

Email-based attacks, such as phishing, often trick users into revealing credentials or downloading malware, making it a key concern for organizations. While the exact percentage can vary, the evidence clearly highlights email's role in major cyber incidents, emphasizing the need for strong email security measures.

So what has Big Tech done to alleviate this problem? The story isn't much different in this use case when compared to task management. Remember, Google's big first act was free email, which at the time competed against Yahoo's and Microsoft's offerings in this space. And they definitely won that war. Once they got us used to the familiar Gmail interface and functionality - better at the time compared to others, the masses went all in on Gmail. Next came Google Drive, Google Photos and the rest is history. Do you think Google allows unified, cloud based email management? Their mobile apps do, but that's it. In fact, the new Microsoft Outlook app for desktop and mobile does allow unified email management and it might be the only major such player in this space who does this.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that just recently the Mozilla Foundation announced the upcoming release of thundermail.com, which will offer a cloud based, open source, unified email service. Hopefully they do it right. Check out the comments under their blog post. Lots of people are dying to get off Gmail and Outlook. And yes, it will cost something as anything that has to do with infrastructure would cost, but that's a trade off that's worth it to me if it solves for the multiple problems Big Tech isn't just not solving, they are actively exploiting and have been for decades.

I'm not a fan of the Mozilla Foundation ever since they kicked out Brendan Eich in what was probably one of the first major cases of new era censorship, but that's a different story. I wish them well wherever they may be in their journey ideologically. Maybe they have outgrown their previous politics and limitations, who knows. If they solve for the lack of a true cloud based, open source, unified email service that would be great for all of us.

You can sign up for their mailing list here: https://thundermail.com/