Several mini-rants to follow.
Maybe because of the externality of the renderer with respect to non-Email traffic? embedded 1-pixel transparent .GIFs as the perfect example of that.
HTML does not need to exist in the domain of email. If you're spending as long formatting fucking text as you are typing your thoughts then you have IMO destroyed the usefulness of e-mail as a tool. If you ARE spending that much time formatting, you've created a situation where you might as well be working with a word processor (hence outlook and word, the metaphorical bazooka needed to kill a mosquito) or a page layout program, and then you're back to basically writing a one-line plaintext message ("boss, here's the thing you wanted.")
email communication is essentially designed to be informal, as a supplement for other communication processes in an organization. Businesses almost never make any effort to retain it, at least in the US, so why spend time with formatting it?
Personally, I think all this MAY contribute in large part to the sucess of crappy proprietary IM software (like, oh, all the ones we have buttons for here), which has taken the mantle of quick and informal communication.
IM is the wrong answer, simply because the existing standards are out of date (anyone ever used ntalk or ytalk?), current IM tech will never be standardized or even interoperable (too many egos and no interest in the process by the owning parties), and proposals for future standards have no backing by anyone. The internet operating on anyone's proprietary software is a deal-breaker to me.
