Self-hosted email is in steep decline, Microsoft and Google are taking over
Oh great, Big Tech is now in a great position to decide which messages get through
A researcher has found that the number of large users hosting their own email servers has halved in the past decade. Artem Berezin, a researcher at business email company Live Direct Marketing, analyzed DNS records using daily forward-DNS snapshots and identified two tech giants as handling 38.6% of email. Google Workspace has overtaken self-hosted servers at 21.8%, ahead of Microsoft 365's 16.8%.
Berezin expressed concern over the concentration of email in just two providers, as an outage or filtering change from either could impact the entire ecosystem. The lack of independent operators also inherits deliverability problems from the big two, making it harder for fresh mail servers to gain acceptance. Berezin also highlighted the low rate of DMARC records with valid policies, despite Google and Yahoo increasing requirements in 2024.
He wonders when the community will finally take DMARC enforcement seriously and the scope of the unseen email infrastructure.
Written by urgent.news from The Register Software's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
