Thunderbird to launch its own email service and other tools
Thunderbird, a free email client that is part of Mozilla, is expanding and plans to launch its own email service, Thundermail, and several other tools within the Thunderbird Pro suite, Forbes reports.
Thunderbird has been losing popularity to simpler, more accessible web services for a long time. To remedy this situation, the developers want to launch their own email service that will allow users to create Thundermail accounts or use their own domains.
A key feature of this service will be an emphasis on user privacy. According to the developers, Thundermail will not use messages to train artificial intelligence, will not fill the mailbox with advertisements and will not collect data for sale. The service is currently being tested internally, but anyone interested can join the waiting list on the official website.
The email service will be just one part of what the developers want to offer in the Thunderbird Pro suite. Ryan Sipes, product manager at MZLA Technologies Corporation, a Mozilla Foundation subsidiary that works on all things Thunderbird, says the goal is to offer an alternative to the Google and Microsoft ecosystems.
"Thunderbird loses users each day to rich ecosystems that are both clients and services, such as Gmail and Office365," says Sipes. "These ecosystems have both hard vendor lock-ins (through interoperability issues with 3rd-party clients) and soft lock-ins (through convenience and integration between their clients and services)."
Sipes aims to create a new open source ecosystem that is accessible to everyone. In addition to Thundermail, the team plans to launch three more services – Thunderbird Send, Appointment, and Assist.
Send will be the spiritual successor to Firefox Send, a free, end-to-end encrypted, open-source web file sharing service. Appointment will serve as a simple tool for scheduling events and meetings. Last on the list is Thunderbird Assist, which is currently considered an "experiment" and is supposed to add AI features to the email client.
The language models will be lightweight enough to run locally. The service is being developed in collaboration with FlowerAI, which uses NVIDIA’s confidential computing to provide secure remote processing in case the user’s computer is not powerful enough to run the AI locally. Sipes emphasizes that all remote access features in Thunderbird Assist will be optional, and users will be able to disable them if they have privacy concerns.
Initially, all services will be available as part of a Thunderbird Pro subscription, but pricing and a detailed monetization model have not yet been determined. Sipes notes that once the tools have gained enough users, the services will become free, but with limited functionality, such as fewer accounts in the email client or a reduced file size limit in Send.