Yep, I agree. Email is not really a good channel for analysis anyway since it has a very high signal-to-noise ratio. A lot of kids who've grown up in the texting era think that email is for old fogies and rely solely on shorter-form messages via Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and/or SMS, so their emails are almost pure noise and no conversational content.
Google's new problem is "How do we get access to the contents of these new communication channels so we can continue to read peoples' conversations?". Those new channels are walled gardens and you can't just create a new email client and say "Switch to GInsta for your Instagrams! We give you 2GB of storage!" Unlike the switch to Gmail, the switch to GInsta would represent a hard barrier to the "true" Instagram network.
Google is becoming the new MS; losing relevance with the younger crowd who are all about "social" platforms, and becoming more and more an enterprise sales model. What happens when Facebook goes after web search?
Google's new problem is "How do we get access to the contents of these new communication channels so we can continue to read peoples' conversations?". Those new channels are walled gardens and you can't just create a new email client and say "Switch to GInsta for your Instagrams! We give you 2GB of storage!" Unlike the switch to Gmail, the switch to GInsta would represent a hard barrier to the "true" Instagram network.
Google is becoming the new MS; losing relevance with the younger crowd who are all about "social" platforms, and becoming more and more an enterprise sales model. What happens when Facebook goes after web search?