And that is why email is not going to die.
E-mail is dying. Most e-mail goes through gmail now. It will probably never die entirely. But Google will add features to gmail-to-gmail that will push independent servers out of the loop for most people, I'm sure of it. Embrace and extend, just like they did with XMPP, it's just an older and more rooted protocol, so it takes longer to outcompete.
@clacke@datamost.com I think email is unpopular because of several technical weaknesses, and several poor ui issues. But I don't think an alternative with the same wide availability can be built right now. Google actually tried something that could've replaced email with wave but that died from being to complex