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How The Postman Almost Owned E-Mail

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-kinda dept.

Thrawn writes "'Imagine that the U.S. Postal Service was in charge of e-mail. Sound absurd? It does to most people until they realize that it almost happened.' " I think the chance of it actually happening are massively overstated in this article, but it's still an interesting "What If". But about as likely, as say, The Confederacy ? winning the US Civil War ? .

2 of 428 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I've read this already by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 5, Informative

    What is he suggesting? That any other systems of E-mail aside from ones controlled by the USPS would be *illegal*?

    Yep. It's already illegal to compete with the U.S. Postal Service for non-expedited personal mail.

  2. Canada Post by SClitheroe · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not sure if the USPS does anything like this, but Canada Post runs epost.ca, which is like their version of Hotmail. It's free, and the upshot is that you can configure your account so that the various companies that you interact with, such as the phone company, the cable company, your bank, etc, send emails via epost.ca rather than printed bills or notices.

    I guess it works because in some sense email from epost.ca is "official", since it's run by the Post Office. Sort of a neat concept, I guess.