The Dream Of Usable E-mail Encryption Is Still A Work In Progress

Tech-savvy people have had a way to send secure e-mail since the mid 1990s, when legendary cryptographer Phil Zimmermann created the encryption software known as Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP. But despite more than 20 years of existence, PGP, as well as its free replacement GPG, has never been mainstream. That’s because it’s a relatively hard-to-use tool for the few who would bother to use the command line, clunky e-mail clients’ extensions, and bootstrapped software. But in 2014, in the aftermath of the Edward Snowden revelations, Google and Yahoo, the two largest e-mail providers in the world, promised to change that once and for all with a browser plugin that would make sending encrypted e-mails so seamless anyone could use it.

Now, it’s been almost two years, and encryption is making headlines thanks to the public fight between the FBI and Apple over the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino (CA) shooters. The controversial case has prompted several tech companies not only to support Apple in court, but also promise even more encryption in their services. Yet, Google and Yahoo’s projects on secure end-to-end encrypted e-mail have yet to see the light of day. That’s why some are starting to question how much Google and Yahoo really care about making this happen.