What is XMail? Details on Elon Musk's rumoured Gmail alternative
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XMail does not exist. Not yet, anyway. However, Elon Musk has once again teased he is planning such a new email service, which is believed to be pitched as a rival to Google’s Gmail. On social network X, Mr Musk suggested his employees may be working on XMail.
“Yeah. On the list of things to do,” Mr Musk responded to a post from popular account DogeDesigner, which read, “XMail would be cool”. DogeDesigner also posted a mocked-up logo for XMail. This has led to a flurry of speculation about the as yet non-existent platform, including that it will be a simpler alternative to traditional email services like Gmail.
Mr Musk did not follow up with any more substantive comment, but this is not the first time the investor has teased XMail. In February 2024, Mr Musk made a similar content-light tease. He replied, “it’s coming” to X user Natemcgrady’s post, “when we making XMail?”.
These posts were made in the wake of a hoax that suggested Gmail was to be shut down – a hoax spread widely on X itself. While Mr Musk has not talked in any depth about XMail, or provided hints on how it may differ from a standard email client, the concept is consistent with plans the billionaire has discussed in the past.
In 2023, Mr Musk talked to X employees in a meeting about why Twitter was rebranded as X, a move that took place in earnest in July 2022. Mr Musk’s aspiration was for X to become the “everything app”, modelled after China’s massively popular WeChat platform.
