Time For Thunderbird to Grow Up
Posted on September 18, 2007, under Browsers, Email, Software, Tools and Services.
The Mozilla Corporation is going to spin Thunderbird out into it’s own company, and fund it with $3 million. This is great news, and with the recent news of Yahoo acquiring Zimbra, means more exciting things are coming for email.
Thunderbird has been real slow to release features that could have made it a true Outlook killer. With it spinning off into it’s own company it will now get the focus, dedication, and funding that it has always needed. There are loads of opportunity here in the form of partnerships with GMail, or Yahoo, but probably not Hotmail. There has also been rumors of a new GMail desktop client which may lead to a long awaited API to GMail. Things are definitely still evolving in the email space, even with all of the new Twitters and IM services popping up.
On another note pulled from the article, it was interesting to hear Mitchell Baker, chair of Mozilla Foundation, being quoted in saying “There have been very public complaints about bloat coming back to Firefox and lack of innovation”. It’s good to know that the Mozilla Foundation knows when it’s been spreading itself too thin, and can be flexible enough to fix itself; unlike some other companies.
Popularity: 7% [?]
