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AnonTechie writes:

Mike Elgan predicts that Google will end Gmail within the next five years.

The company hasn't announced such a move -- nor would it. But whether we like it or not, and whether even Google knows it or not, Gmail is doomed.

Email was created to serve as a "dumb pipe". In mobile network parlance, a "dumb pipe" is when a carrier exists to simply transfer bits to and from the user, without the ability to add services and applications or serve as a "smart" gatekeeper between what the user sees and doesn't see.

Carriers resist becoming "dumb pipes" because there's no money in it. A pipe is a faceless commodity, valued only by reliability and speed. In such a market, margins sink to zero or below zero, and it becomes a horrible business to be in.

The fact is that Google, and companies like Google, hate unmediated anything. The reason is that Google is in the algorithm business, using user-activity "signals" to customize and personalize the online experience and the ads that are served up as a result of those signals. Google exists to mediate the unmediated. That's what it does. That's what the company's search tool does: It mediates our relationship with the Internet.

The bottom line is that dumb-pipe email is unmediated, and therefore it's a business that Google wants to get out of as soon as it can.

Does SN agree with this analysis (rant) ?