Re: Consolidation of Email Platforms Bad for Email?

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

> On Sep 8, 2020, at 4:38 AM, Eliot Lear via NANOG <nanog () nanog org> wrote:
>
> I'm sure Dave Crocker has thoughts about this, but it has come up elsewhere.  There are both positives and negatives 
> about having such a consolidation.  The positive is that it a small club can establish ground rules for how they will 
> handle various forms of attacks, including BGP hijacking, DKIM, SPF, and other forms of validation to identify 
> fraudulent mail, etc.  Also, if you have a whole lot of postfixes and sendmails running around, that's a whole lot of 
> code to patch when things go wrong.  A small number of MSPs can devote a lot of time and paid eyes on code.  They can 
> also very quickly spot new attack trends.

All true…

> On the other hand, that means that it becomes difficult to become a new entrant, because one doesn't easily get one's 
> mail accepted.  Lots of grey/blacklisting (forgive the use of the term).  Also, when one of those systems fails, it 
> takes down a vast number of customers.  Furthermore, it represents a massive concentration of private information 
> that can be monetized.

You’ve also left out:

Economic incentives to make questionable use of mail content and user data.
Economic incentives to make life difficult for new entrants.
Economic incentives to avoid transparency or convenience in addressing user concerns about erroneously rejected email.
Reduction in consumer choice (if there are a handful of providers and they all provide essentially the same (crappy) 
level of service, then what can the consumer do about it?
#include <std_list_of_oligopoly_prolems.h>

Owen

> Eliot
>
> On 08.09.20 00:27, Mike Hammett via NANOG wrote:
> > I originally asked on mailops, but here is a much wider net and I suspect there's a lot of overlap in interest.
> >
> >
> > I had read an article one time, somewhere about the ongoing consolidation of e-mail into a handful of providers was 
> > bad for the Internet as a whole. It was some time ago and thus, the details have escaped me, so I was looking to 
> > refresh my recollection.
> >
> > Have any of you read a similar article before? If so, can you link me to it?
> >
> >
> >
> > -----
> > Mike Hammett
> > Intelligent Computing Solutions
> > http://www.ics-il.com <http://www.ics-il.com/>
> >
> > Midwest-IX
> > http://www.midwest-ix.com <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
> <OpenPGP_0x87B66B46D9D27A33_and_old_rev.asc>