Certainly there are many alternatives to email. And certainly for most companies these alternatives would be more effective than this robot. But the company claims to have adopted it because it was cheaper and more effective than those other alternatives. And I can see why.

Specifically, this company was considering a video conferencing service. Presumably there are other collaborative technologies they are using (to share files for example).

Video conferencing is great, but it is far more limited than the robot. In fact, the robot is just a video conference camera that can be moved from room to room. This is great for businesses that want to have meetings in more than one room, and don’t want to have to buy a camera for each one. And having a stand-alone camera is much better than a camera attached to your computer. If the camera is attached to your computer, you can really only use it to show your face. What if you want to show someone a room full of people, or a file on your computer, or an object?

Collaborative technologies are never as good as having two people in the same room together. Futurists have long predicted 3D holograms and humanoid robots as ways of bringing people into the same room virtually. But the technology has never been there.

POGO is extremely limited. But what is so cool about it is that some random company developed it for internal use because they thought it would be the cheapest and best way of solving their problem. That is normally a sign of an emerging and important innovation.