... continued from the original article (thanks for making the jump!)

Along the line of communications that are involved in getting e-mail from point A to point B the various ISPs are left assuming the costs involved and are left lending and borrowing storage space and communications time between each other.  The ISPs all have agreements that guarantee service along the way and open paths of communications between providers.  Again, it's all a cost of doing business in our modern connected internet world.

During the growth of our modern internet connected world there was a little company/service provider that created the product that we now know as Hotmail.  It was designed as a product that would let users send and receive e-mail for free provided that they get their mail via the web and see the banner advertisements and other advertising that exists on the Hotmail site.  The creators of Hotmail would sell the ad space and use the money to cover the costs of running the Hotmail system so that users would continue to be able to use the service for free.

As the net was maturing, Microsoft saw the growth of Hotmail and decided that it would make a good acquisition and addition to their product suite.  By hooking customers on the free Hotmail product they could advertise other Microsoft services and hopefully up-sell customers into other purchases.  Hmmm, a nice steady stream of income if things would go well for Microsoft.

A little later the "free" ISP revolution popped along with the internet bubble of the late 90's and early 2000's.  The companies that had been providing free services found that the income levels they hoped for just weren't there and slowly but surely many of the freebies went buh bye.  Except, that is, for the free e-mail services.  Those seemed to have a shield of invulnerability.  Hotmail survived, thanks to Microsoft's deep pockets.  Netscape Mail survived (and eventually was rolled into AOL mail).  Lycos mail survived.  Yahoo! mail survived and for the most part thrived.  And a product called Gmail (Google Mail) survived (not without it's own share of controversy, but that's a different topic).

Originally I stayed away from the Gmail product.  The privacy concerns, the targetted advertising that was being used, and other features (or lack thereof) kept me with Hotmail as my primary mail provider.  My one complaint - the smallish inbox and other size limitations imposed on the service.  Microsoft offered a fix for that complaint though, just pay them a small yearly fee and you could bust the normal caps and use more space, keep older messages around and go on about your business fairly unfettered.  Their product/service name: Hotmail Plus, or later MSN Hotmail Plus.

The Plus service got you larger space limitations, promises of advertising free mail when viewing through the web, and the ability to use Outlook/Outlook Express to continue getting your mail from/through Hotmail.

Admittedly, I'm a Microsoft sheep when it comes to my e-mail.  I use Outlook because it synchronizes well with my PDA, my cell phones (for contacts and such) and just because I "grew up" using Outlook Express for my e-mail system (not that I didn't know and use Eudora for a while, or other packages as well, just that I used Outlook Express the most).

I stuck with the Hotmail Plus/MSN Hotmail Plus product for a few years of payments but groused a bit about the charges always feeling that the payments I was making weren't really getting me that much more value.  Today I finally cut the strings on the service completely.  In the last few months I've been slowly but surely switching to using Gmail.  It works for my needs, provides gobs and gobs of storage, and oh, by the way, I can get my e-mail into Outlook/Outlook Express if I want (which I'll eventually configure).

Microsoft had gone to bill me for MSN Hotmail Plus and failed because my credit card information that was on file was old.  Good.  It worked out better that way as otherwise I'd have paid for service and been left unable to get the charges dropped.  When I called them to cancel the account they were still wanting to charge me for service.  Sorry, not gonna happen.  They did cancel the account, leaving me with "free Hotmail" which is perfectly adequate for my needs while I continue to wean myself off of Hotmail and move to Gmail.   As long as the service is free I'll keep the account and check in daily so that the account doesn't die (you have to check in once every 30 days, I'll be way ahead on that requirement).

Do I not think that MSN Hotmail Plus is a valuable service?  Hard call. $19.95 a year is a fairly reasonable fee, but then again I pay *nothing* for Gmail, zero for Yahoo! mail, and zilch for AOL mail.  Why do I need to pay Microsoft anything for their service when it really doesn't offer any more than I get from any other service?  In fact, it offers less since they are trying to tie the use of Outlook/Outlook Express for sending/receiving/reading Hotmail to the MSN Hotmail Plus service.

Again, I pay nothing to get full use of Outlook/Outlook Express in conjunction with Gmail, or Yahoo! mail, etc.  Why should I find my choice of e-mail software restricted when using Hotmail?  Microsoft has gone down that road to help fund Hotmail, which is fine, but I just don't see the need to pay them more money for something that is still available free elsewhere.

Will Microsoft's choice of charging for MSN Hotmail Plus services that are available free elsewhere wind up killing their own product?  If it does, it'll like be a long slow death.  Microsoft has deep pockets, and they can take their time making decisions.  Even if they do lose customers to other competitors it likely won't hurt them for a long time to come.  In fact, they may save money by chasing away resource hogs that are costing them money currently.  That's fine, but again I'm getting off the ride and going elsewhere where I can ride for free.

I think it is going to depend on the quality of service of the free email. If MS provide something people can't get free, whether it be security, options, etc., then maybe. Frankly, I don't see them outperforming google. With the new web services being connected to gmail, it seem bleak.

I have gmail and Yahoo (pay for) for the simple reason I want a steady mail box for when I move my ISP.  I have an ISP account, but never use it.  I tried hotmail and could not stand the spam and ads I got (even though I never gave it out to anyone).  I let it die.  Yahoo gives me 2gb of space for my small fee (Gmail gives me gobs for nothing - but that is my secret account - only my son and sister have it).

I have gmail and Yahoo (pay for) for the simple reason I want a steady mail box for when I move my ISP. I have an ISP account, but never use it. I tried hotmail and could not stand the spam and ads I got (even though I never gave it out to anyone). I let it die. Yahoo gives me 2gb of space for my small fee (Gmail gives me gobs for nothing - but that is my secret account - only my son and sister have it).

With respect, I'm gonna reply to both Dr. Guy and BakerStreet both here.

I'm in agreement with BakerStreet's comments about the value depending on the quality of the service and/or that the service is one you don't get elsewhere.  That was one of the main points in my comments.  I don't believe that MS *is* providing additional value at this time and because of that, I expect that they'll slowly but surely lose customers over time.

On the Yahoo! front, and actually Lycos as well, I never spent the money on additional space and such.  Just never had the need.  Close on the Lycos side for my wife, but they've upped their limits a bit and she's gotten better at learning how to archive her own stuff locally to her PC rather than letting it sit on the Lycos servers.

On the spam front and Gmail, they've already helped me determine where a good bit of my current spam was coming from -- IWon.com   I had suspected, but not been able to confirm that they were the biggest culprit for me.  Almost as soon as I gave them my new address I was getting spammed again by the same old culprits.  I've since changed my notification and privacy settings with them, but I doubt it will do any good.  Meanwhile if stuff hits the spam box on Gmail that's fine.  I can deal with it appropriately.

I will eventually switch to using Gmail in a pop mode where I download to Outlook.  I'm not rushed to do it, but I do miss the ability to use sorting features and such within Outlook and that being the case I know I'll be switching sometime soon.

Finally, 100% agreement with Dr. Guy about steady mail box.  That's part of why I used Hotmail, spam not included.  When I left Erols (dial-up ISP) and switched to IVWNet for a while I lost my e-mail address soon after.  I was working furiously to switch to Hotmail during that period.  Once I went a year or so with IVWNet, I was back to Erols.  Stayed with them until Comcast finally gave me hi-speed (whooopeee!).  During all of that time I kept using Hotmail because I knew I could get to it from anywhere.  I didn't mind that much paying them for the additional storage and such, but I've really never seen any real value for my payment, hence the desire to cut off the payments.

Who knows?  I may wind up deciding it was worth the money if I keep checking Hotmail via the web and am bombarded with ads on the free version.  Until I've tried it for a while, I can't say for sure.

Meanwhile I still have over a half-dozen e-mail addresses that I could use if I want.  The primary (for now) will be the one I use at Gmail, with the others not well announced so that I can hopefully avoid a good bit of spam.  (Which unfortunately has long since infested my @AOL address, formerly @Netscape.com address).

Without quoting, just responding.  I bought into Yahoo as the other POP servers started going to pay for (I had another account that was free - then went pay for, and the service sucked).  I just chose Yahoo.  There Spam filter is pretty good, and it is my main one.  I have another where the service sucks, but it is free and no spam filters (and probably will disappear soon - tech thing if you know what I mean).

Gmail, since it is never given out, is pretty good.  Yahoo with it, is not bad either. Just a chocolate or vanilla choice for me.  But after my bad experience with Hotmail - I aint ever going there again!  Free or pay for!

Gmail will be my secret one.  And so far, because my address is not obvious, very little spam.  Yahoo, with the spam filter, is doing ok.  The other?  That is the one posted on the web.  And when they die, so does a couple of lists and a ton of spam!

To each their own.  In addition to those 3, I have about 6 others.  All professional, and none going out to any but vendor sites.  Unfortunately one was realaudio.  So now I get mail (infrequently, but still coming) addressed to Skipwith.  The name of the school I used to register real audio on, and the only time I used it.  So I KNOW real Audio sells their list and I refuse to register any more with them.