Hotmail was my first internet email id, and as such, I have a lot of regard for it. the love story ends there.
when hotmail was under hotmail’s own control (remember, microsoft later purchased it for $400million), it was the fastest email service around. (i specially recollect fondly, the HotmailDirect addressing service). you had a very simple, easy-to-understand interface, there were no frills, no surprises, nothing out of the ordinary - it was just a simple, superb web-based email service.
enter microsoft - and the equation changed. now we see lots of advertisements, some extremely annoying pop-up windows, and lots more features that i’m sure nobody ever attempts to use.
hey people - most of use dialup connections, and phone-calls are expensive. in such a scenario, why would I waste my time downloading html that i’ll never use or need, when all I need is a simple email box? the average size of the home page of msn hotmail (as it’s called now), is about 80kb - on a dialup, takes about 2 to 3 minutes to load (of course, on a faster connection, it typically takes less than 30 seconds).
enter spam - it’s true that hotmail is the most free email service, in that no @hotmail.com email address is safe from spammers. I receive no less than 180 emails a day at my hotmail box (and I work overtime to clear them, each day), and out of this, atleast 170 are junk. their junk-mail filter contains only 100 addresses, and how many of us have the patience to keep managing spam? I don’t.
(the very fact that there is such a junk mail filtration system points to the fact that hotmail is a very ’public’ email service, I guess.)
i use a lot of email services (have about 40 email addresses in all), and have found hotmail about the bottom of the pits. in all respects. consider this - when yahoo (extremely spam-free, believe me - no issues at all with these guys!) offers you 6mb of storage, why does hotmail give you a paltry 2mb?
you could debate this with a ’hey, this is a free service - be happy with what you get’ disclaimer, but the issue is not about free or not-free. the issue is about basic safety, security, comfort of life (yup, even in a basic thing like email). the issue is about having publicised my hotmail email id since the last so many years, and being blackmailed into using it since the whole world (probably the whole world) knows it as my unique identity. the issue is about not being able to kill my hotmail id because of the good emails I receive, and not being able to individually update all my contacts of a different one.
in my humble opinion, the issue is deeper than just free - it’s about msn creating a strong demand for a very poor service, and somehow or the other making sure that people have to use it - for what purpose, advertisements? or whatever else, i’m not too sure if their revenue model includes only msn.com (and affiliates), or if it runs deeper than just self-propagation.
...more rants and allied stuff here... no bandwidth to fill them in...
the bottomline is that I still respect hotmail for doing the one thing that everyone probably desperately looked for - creating the concept of a free service on the internet, and more importantly, initiating a rash of such free services. sure, in the bargain they lost out on quality (over time, of course), but they remain in my mind, the progenitor of free on the internet.