Email is a daily chore that can be quite annoying, whether it’s for work or leisure (if there is such a thing), but a new company called Inbox thinks it has found a way to make email a more pleasant experience. Founded by former Dropbox engineer and Nest designer Michael Grinich and Christine Spang, who previously worked at Ksplice on the Linux kernel, Inbox wants to take on Gmail and everyone else with an open-source solution that’s built by an “email company” rather than an “advertising company,” The Next Web reports.
“Email is here to stay, the company says. “But developing with email has become more and more difficult over the years. Old protocols and formats have made it nearly impossible to add the simplest features, and the existing mail providers have all but stopped innovating. In the current email landscape, captive users are shown targeted advertisements, and interfaces are cluttered with confusing “social” services.”
While all that sounds interesting, email users – which probably amounts to everyone who’s regularly using the Internet – will have to wait for the first Inbox-based apps to become available. At this time, there’s no app ready for users, as Inbox is currently focusing on developers.
The company has an Inbox Sync Engine that “adds a modern API on top of mail providers including Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook.com,” while a hosted version of Inbox is coming later this year.
“As we bring more providers to Inbox, including custom IMAP servers and legacy Microsoft Exchange deployments, your apps will ‘just work.’ It’s our goal to provide an uniform API to email so you can focus on building great software,” Inbox tells developers.
