Email is where new software features get invented.

Somehow, today’s best-in-class email apps are hybrids, combinations of the best ideas every other email app brought before. It’s hard to imagine email without web apps, limitless storage, notifications, archive search, and a bit of over-the-top self-promotion. Each feature, at one time, was enough to launch a new email app, to convince us all to sw... See more

Email apps are good at being better. They've invented or popularized some of the most innovative ideas in software—even if they can’t always find a business model to match. And those features are what live on.