It's very interesting to see that Google tries to build a new email system: Open Wave Protocol . They could be successful since email protocol is just too old. Just take a look for example how people in Germany try to extend email to become secure: Bürgerportale . They try to stick to the old protocol and extend it with many extensions. Oh my dear...
Let's talk about Model Driven Architecture (MDA), Open Source Software and Java (included Java island)!