Hotmail development team on Reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ej32l/we_are_the_hotmail_development_team_lets_talk/c18gp4r?context=1

by netaddict • 16 years ago

105 118 16 years ago

steverb• 16 years ago

The poster is not questioning the need for open standards, they are questioning the user's need to have that particular standard implemented in hotmail.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing to do IMO.

wccrawford• 16 years ago

He wasn't just questioning that particular standard. He was completely unable to understand a user wanting it. He had no clue that there is so much software out there that works with IMAP, but doesn't work with their proprietary protocol.

larrik4• 16 years ago

I agree that the headline is a bit over the top.

When I saw that they mentioned ActiveSync, all I could think of was "I'd have to plug my phone into my computer to get email???" I didn't know that's what they call their push service now.

Locke168911• 16 years ago

Yeah the full name is Exchange ActiveSync.

cryptoz6• 16 years ago

I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270".

That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could come home to find 10 years of email deleted. Who would stay with an email service that does that? Microsoft just doesn't get that users want to be happy. Are the $ savings MS gets from disk space of old deleted emails really that important?

Edit: Maybe this is a feature Facebook should implement. They ask for your Hotmail login and password anyway, they may as well say "Microsoft will delete your emails! But don't worry, we'll save them for you". Maybe then MS would take a hint and remove the "delete user's email now" code.

benologist4• 16 years ago

There's internet, even in Africa! If you completely disconnect in this day and age for 9 months you're probably dead.

cryptoz6• 16 years ago

That's really not the point, though. Microsoft wrote code that will intentionally delete your email. It doesn't matter how unlikely that is or how bizarre the scenario is, that fact means I'll never use the service or recommend it to anyone. What if there's a bug in that code? Why risk writing code that deletes emails left and right? What's the point?

The Devs said "we’d love your feedback", and when people say "please don't ever delete my email", the response is basically "too bad, you have 270 days". It's insulting.

viraptor2• 16 years ago

I'm pretty sure you can in most places that are not extremely remote. However I disagree about the "probably dead" comment. Only so many people are connected every day to check their emails. I know many who think once a month or so - "I haven't checked my email for a while". Not all people feel a need to carry a 3g-enabled phone with them, or do silly stuff like have an instant messanger...

I expect many people to be able to completely ignore their email for a year simply because they have nothing to send and then come back to it. Standard person != tech freak.

silvestrov• 16 years ago

Or you could just be burned out and wanting a period without any internet at all to get back on your feet.

9 months is just what it takes to make a baby.

jasonkester• 16 years ago

There's a difference between not using the internet and not using hotmail.

I personally log into Hotmail twice a year, specifically to ensure that my account does not get deleted. I have enough things from my past that may or may not try to send me an email at my @hotmail.com address (or require it to get back in to their service) that it's just to risky to lose it.

GavinB• 16 years ago

I basically agree with you, but I'm guessing that the important thing isn't saving disk space, but freeing up usernames.

Osmose• 16 years ago

Don't you get a Live account when you sign up for Hotmail? Those don't get deleted after 270 days; I've used my Live account (originally a Hotmail account) for Xbox Live and other services without logging into Hotmail for years now.

So I doubt it's for usernames.

cryptoz6• 16 years ago

> but freeing up usernames.

WHAT?! They do that? That's SO dangerous, and perhaps what made me lose a domain name three years ago! I registered a domain in 2001 with my hotmail account, and noticed in 2006 that the registration had changed to another person in Ontaio, Canada. My only guess as to how they did that (after much investigation) was that they must have accessed my hotmail account, which was dormant for probably three years (but was the account I used with my registrar). I couldn't figure out how they got into my email, and I eventually gave up the fight and got a new domain name. Now I'm waiting out the expiration on the first one, hoping I can get it back.

Do they ACTUALLY recycle usernames? Is THAT how I lost my domain name?! Someone just registered my old hotmail account back, and then probably "lost password" to the account? Fuck that makes me so mad. There's no way MS does this...does anyone know?

eitland• 16 years ago

Wrong. My first username (that I'm pretty sure no one else has taken) was blocked for inactivity 10 years ago and never became available again.

Retric• 16 years ago

I think it's mostly to deal with all the temporary accounts that start as Spam1234@hotmail.com and then get spammed for years without the user ever going back to them.

I suspect a more reasonable rule is that you have to log in or download email at least once 60 days after creation or the account get's deleted in one year.

jules• 16 years ago

Um, they make inactive usernames available again? It's nice except that many sites have reset-my-password buttons...

ergo982• 16 years ago

Not sure about this. Hotmail accounts are like Facebook connect accounts, and I use mine for xbox live, MSN messenger, among other Microsoft services. Yet I haven't used Hotmail in years, and when I did I'd always get the "we deleted everything so now you're fresh again" setup notice.

oogali• 16 years ago

I dunno what Hotmail is based on, but Microsoft Exchange slows down with the increasing number of items in your inbox, not necessarily message size.

Maybe they're using the same message store?

Locke168911• 16 years ago

No, it's a lot more complicated than that. Actually, what you're suggesting just doesn't scale.

rbanffy2• 16 years ago

A client that uses Exchange has to limit internal mail-boxes to 100 megs. If you want backups, move messages to a .pst and copy it to a network share...

I think that reliance on Exchange is a huge mistake.

travisp• 16 years ago

Not that it makes it better, but I'll point out that Yahoo is now deleting inactive email accounts as well.

danieldon2• 16 years ago

Right, it doesn't make the hotmail situation look better, it just reinforces how bad they both are.

What's also horrible about the yahoo policy is that there is that you can reactive the account (at least for some period of time), but the email archives are deleted. This happened to one of my accounts.

elai• 16 years ago

Gmail "might" delete inactive accounts after 9 months/270 days. But if it's forwarding mail it wont delete it, unlike hotmail. Hotmail has more conditions for inactivity it seems.

l0c0b0x• 16 years ago

Maybe they understand that 85% of people's email is spam anyway and don't really care if accounts get deleted... almost like saying: "you should have known better!"

primigenus• 16 years ago

This exact thing happened to me in 2005 - I lost 7 years of emails from high school, college, between myself and several girlfriends, chat logs I'd saved from IRC, photos, and other important notes. I was incredibly pissed and immediately stopped using hotmail for anything, including changing all my other accounts everywhere else to not use hotmail as a backup email address.

It was unbelievable to me then that they would delete your email after 30 (?) days of inactivity, and it's unbelievable to me now, especially after Gmail changed the game for them in 2004 by essentially saying that diskspace is a commodity and you can therefore store as much as you want with them (within reason) for as long as you want.

Sure, there are things in the ToS that cover Google's ass, but no Google engineer in his right mind would write code that automatically deletes someone's email after a predetermined (way too short) time period. There would be too many alarm bells going off in their head, they'd talk about it with the team, and they'd make the right call. Something tells me that with Hotmail, it was just an exec somewhere looking at a balance sheet and trickling an order down the waterfall so the revenue looks nicer.

Jaded, but goddamnit.

katovatzschyn• 16 years ago

The same thing had happen to me. 2 months passed, lost to the mountains and wild of the hinterlands, I return and Microsoft has burned all of my letters and rented out my room. GMail was an easy choice.

OoTheNigerian• 16 years ago

"If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could come home to find 10 years of email deleted."

That is more insulting.

We have Internet here so you can check your mail.

jrnkntl• 16 years ago

Please don't play that card. I can imagine that the places that would need some kind of aid program don't have that at hand (f.e. fair parts of Zimbabwe & Tanzania). We all know Nigeria does have the access, and NOFI but a lot of people have suffered from Internet enabled Nigerians through Hotmail ;)

cryptoz6• 16 years ago

My girlfriend is going on a Field Study program with a Canadian university. She will be there for five months and have "very little" Internet access. She's forbidden from bringing her own computer, and the 40 students share a professor's laptop.

Sure, there's Internet all over Africa. It's one of the most connected continents, at least with mobile. But people going on programs there, from the West, typically don't get to access the Internet much. This is not a reflection on access to the internet there, but a reflection on how the Field Study students spend their time and money.

Please don't read into things that I said and be insulted by them. I meant nothing about how well Africa is connected, and I most certainly did mean to insult anyone.

jamesaguilar• 16 years ago

I imagine the parts of Africa that need aid may be somewhat less internet-enabled. Do you have the internet in rural areas where most aid workers would likely be stationed?

jedbrown• 16 years ago

Different example: Xinjiang, the largest administrative region in China (17% of the land area) was disconnected from all internet and phone from early July 2009 until May 2010 (because China wanted to be the sole purveyor of information regarding ethnic unrest in the region). There may not be many people using hotmail in that region, but anyone who could not afford to travel 1000 kilometers to a different region for email would not have logged in during that period.

mediaman• 16 years ago

There are still many remote parts of North America that do not have Internet access, either.

I've had friends spend weeks on trips to rural Sierra Leone, and guess what? There's no running water, much less Internet access.

That's not the same as saying wherever you live in Africa has no modern facilities including the Internet.

G_Wen• 16 years ago

While everyone is up in arms for Microsoft at deleting the emails after 270 days Google too has a policy which they can terminate your account ofter 9 months (30x9=270) of inactivity. It seems reddit needs to do a little reading up.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en-GB/program_policies...

However I'm not clear if they have it automatically delete it after 9 months regardless of the activity or if there are other conditions that factor into this.

The whole deleting emails is a bad experience though. Just another reason to back up important files.

raganwald• 16 years ago

A few years back I was working with a BigButNimbleCo (yes, they exist) and there was a sudden kerfuffle. It seems that the Exchange servers had started crashing because there was too much email in them, and IT was sending out warnings that stuff was going to be deleted, so save what you wanted into archive files on the file shares.

Sorry, I may not have explained this very clearly: Exchange was crashing because it held too much mail. I have no idea how many terrabytes were involved, but there fewer than 10,000 employees at the time.

I know everyone is going to say that Exchange and Hotmail are completely different code bases, but what they have in common is Microsoft's vision of what people do with email and how they do it. I'd say that deleting old mail is in Microsoft's DNA.

zandorg• 16 years ago

I've kept email since I switched from Hotmail to POP3 in about 1998. The wonderful bit is I wrote a desktop application which scans any number of hard drives and finds all mail in the main 5 formats (Mbox, Kmail files, Outlook <2003, Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, Eudora). Then you can search it with SQL.

I haven't been able to find a customer for it but I love using it.

But the point is "Don't throw away all that old email, put it in a database so you can search over 100,000 messages for just a few results to look at".

kgo2• 16 years ago

I wouldn't trust any free service not to delete all my emails, either accidentally or intentionally. Hotmail supports IMAP and POP. So even if you normally use the web-interface, open up thunderbird every few months a month and sync up.

cryptoz6• 16 years ago

You are correct, except for "Hotmail supports IMAP and POP." No, Hotmail does not support IMAP. That was actually the source of a lot of Reddit's anger (MS devs didn't seem to understand that people want IMAP, so there won't be any support for it any time soon).

ShabbyDoo5• 16 years ago

I hope the Hotmail team follows through with answering questions. When the IE team offered to answer questions on Reddit, they quit after a few hours.

The questions I had asked was (summarized): Most IE6 usage seems to be from large corps, and much of their resistance to upgrading is due to internal apps which only work correctly on IE6. Why doesn't Microsoft offer a standalone IE6 distro which could be installed alongside IE8/9 and used for the few apps holding back company-wide upgrades?

stevelosh• 16 years ago

> When the IE team offered to answer questions on Reddit, they quit after a few hours.

From the original post:

> tl;dr: Hotmail engineers and product managers want to discuss email from 12-3 PST today.

larrik4• 16 years ago

I believe that Microsoft is still insisting that IE6 and Windows are inseparable, due to that being their defense in the DOJ trial.

sudont• 16 years ago

I think the WINE implementation on Linux and OS X says a few things about their defense.

_dan• 16 years ago

I've often wondered why these companies don't install a non-IE browser as a primary browser, leaving IE6 on the system, then using HTAs (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536496%28VS.85%29....) with IE6 to deliver their intranet stuff.

ShabbyDoo5• 16 years ago

An interesting question, and one which ought to prompt Microsoft to do more for its corp customers. From reading the link, I presume that an HTA app uses whatever IE version happens to be on the system? Another bad thing for Microsoft is that legacy IE6 apps are slowing corporate adoption of Windows 7. Not only do these apps tie corps to a browser, but they tie them to an OS as well!

dflock4• 16 years ago

Companies with these locked down Win2K/XP/ie6 desktops wouldn't install that, because that would be work, which costs money. If they saw ie6 as a problem and were willing to put in any effort whatsoever to fix it, they would have done so long ago.

ShabbyDoo5• 16 years ago

I consulted for a company which had well over 10K managed desktops with XP/IE6. They are in the process of upgrading to IE8 and would be delighted if they could just install it in place of IE6 and go on with life. However, the upgrade team identified well over 70 internal apps, some written in-house and some vendor-provided, which required IE6 to function properly. Some suitable strategy must be identified for each: fix, replace, decommission, etc. If they could install a standalone version of IE6 just for these apps, they could upgrade to IE8 now and fix them over time.

To those who know something about IE6's "architecture": How hard is such an idea given that you are Microsoft? What if the standalone app could be constrained to work only with known-safe websites so that security upgrades were not so essential?

ShabbyDoo5• 16 years ago

"If they saw ie6 as a problem and were willing to put in any effort whatsoever to fix it"

They are now atoning for past sins. I don't think they understood what a pickle they were getting themselves into a few years ago by saying, "Our in-house apps target IE6, our corporate standard browser". Also, they have vendor contracts which do not state, "We guarantee isolated product upgrades to support Microsoft's current browser" or similar. This isn't to say that they shouldn't have been more forward looking -- it's just the reality of the situation.

cshenoy• 16 years ago

From the Hotmail team: "Really quickly, want to address the IMAP questions that have come up.

    We haven't implemented imap since based on the user feedback and usage data, there isn't a large enough need when you look at the other protocols we provide. for mobile - we believe activesync is the best story. it gives you mail, calendar, and contacts. there is big adoption of the protocol here with android, iphone, and windows mobile. for clients - with the outlook connector, windows live mail client, and pop3, we cover the majority of client scenarios. there are definitely some gaps, but not enough to outweigh the cost. one of the tough trade offs we make. let me know if that doesn't answer the question. -ryan"

Either their user base doesn't know any better (likely) or they have an extremely skewed view of the market (likely).

viraptor2• 16 years ago

User base which knows better will never become their user base, until their strategy changes. This also creates their market view.

Now, which one is the chicken and which one is the egg?

larrik4• 16 years ago

As a consultant, I ran into a LOT of people who preferred POP3 on their phones and non-main devices. They just wanted to have as little email on their phone as possible (which also gives you decent security if the phone is lost).

Combine this with the fact that Outlook is just terrible with IMAP, and I didn't find too many regular users who liked it.

Personally, I wouldn't use anything else, of course.

thwarted• 16 years ago

How does the choice of protocol determine if there is as little email on non-mail devices as possible? Also, I've seen people screw up POP3 configuration so the mail moves to the downloading device (because it gets deleted from the server after downloading, as they didn't choose the "leave mail on server" option). If your phone is continuously checking for and downloading mail, that less security in the event your phone is lost, because copies of your email potentially exist in multiple places. With POP3, everything is copied (or moved) and you don't get a choice to only download some messages (after looking at subject lines or sender names) and leave some messages on the server.

weaksauce• 16 years ago

Well they had remote access for a while but started charging for it. I stopped using that feature. I think it was only pop3 anyway.

AndrewDucker• 16 years ago

What I find sad is that 90% of the replies are just flaming, they aren't actually trying to explain why they want it. Only a small proportion are saying that it's because it doesn't support email client X.

dstein3• 16 years ago

The condescending attitude Microsoft has for users and developers can also be seen in their responses to Reddit's Q&A with the IE9 team:

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dk3s0/the_ie9_te...

Locke168911• 16 years ago

Yeah, when I was at Microsoft we were really out to get the users and the developers. Are you fucking serious? I expect it at Reddit but not here.

jey2• 16 years ago

It's not a conscious decision to be hostile, just an effect of Microsoft's cultural norms and attitudes.

dstein3• 16 years ago

I didn't say MS was "out to get the users", I just mean that every response Microsoft has to perfectly reasonable questions like "why don't you support [insert standard here]?" has the same patronizing tone like "we've listened to our customers and delivered a product that they are satisfied with".

samlevine• 16 years ago

Not that this is limited to Microsoft, but the poster suggested condescension and not malice. For example:

>>Does it work on my ubuntu laptop?

Dear iamnotobama - You may be surprised to hear that it actually does work on your laptop. It's a three-step process: 1.Install Windows 7 2.Install IE9, and 3.Enjoy the Beauty of the Web. ☺

sukuriant• 16 years ago

Or are those responses as professional as they can make themselves sound? They didn't seem that arrogant to me, just very political and containing context. Microsoft is a HUGE company and it has gotten in trouble more than once for various things.

And, forgive me, but how are their responses bad? In particular, I found their response to why IE doesn't do silent updates to be incredibly acceptable! (not to mention if any browser were to pull a stunt like auto, silent updates, they'd be assaulted more, to no end)

"One of our principles with Internet Explorer and Windows is user choice; this shows up in many places including our approach to updates. We believe users are in the best position to make decisions about what software they want to run. IE is the most widely used browser including being the most trusted and widely used browser with businesses.

As you can imagine a hospital with a multimillion dollar patient tracking web based application doesn't want a silent or automatic upgrade to their browser that could in fact jeopardize their patient's safety. For consumers, we have Windows update which provides a simple notification that a new version of the browser is available and lets the user choose to install or not. Again, customer choice is our overriding principle." (from link)

Also, a question: what would you have wanted them to say? "No, because we'd get in trouble"? Or, "This is the situation. Because of this, we say no".

lars• 16 years ago

> And, forgive me, but how are their responses bad?

Great question!

At reddit, we are committed to quality comment criticism. Before the release of this criticism we leveraged Rich Internet Applications to survey our users' core requirements in order to provide the best comment reading experience for our users. I'm pleased to announce that our latest criticism will have full support for immersive webrage typing and HW accelerated upvote/downvote technology.

-Lars

(Seriously, check out this summary of their fabulously well constructed non-answers and evasive bullshit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_memb... )

landhar• 16 years ago

Well, I didn't find the IE9 folks as condescending as the Hotmail crew. Their answers are actually very interesting, they don't appear as incompetents.

EDIT: Sorry. I take it back, I just read this:

---------8<---------

iamnotobama writes:

    Does it work on my ubuntu laptop?

Dear iamnotobama - You may be surprised to hear that it actually does work on your laptop. It's a three-step process:

   1. Install Windows 7
   2. Install IE9, and
   3. Enjoy the Beauty of the Web.

--------->8---------

aquadoctorbob• 16 years ago

Really? I thought that one was the most human of their responses because it is so obviously tongue-in-cheek.

twymer3• 16 years ago

I think this was a negative PR move. Did they really think coming on reddit and saying things like this would be beneficial? I don't see any evidence in this that they actually care about peoples feedback.

They just keep getting defensive about their decisions of deleting peoples email, not supporting IMAP etc.

joblessjunkie• 16 years ago

There's no such thing as bad press.

I've read the name "Hotmail" more times today than I had in the past 6 months.

siddhant• 16 years ago

Yes but all of it is in negative connotation. The replies on the thread are downright insulting. Take this for example - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ej32l/we_are_the_hotma...

I think the Hotmail team shouldn't have done this, at least not before putting all the basic features in place.

twymer3• 16 years ago

I guess this is a valid point. It reminds those who've forgotten about it that it still exists and is still being worked on.

uniclaude• 16 years ago

True, today was the first time I logged in my hotmail account since last summer. On the other hand, what I read on this thread made me understand why I haven't open this mailbox for months.

jokermatt999• 16 years ago

Some good lessons about PR can be learned here. For one, don't use your normal marketing tone/marketing speak in a candid Q/A session like this one. The IE9 AMA and this AMA have done more to make me lose respect for Microsoft than anything else I've seen from them (although, I should note that I'm not old enough to have been around in their true "evil empire" style days). If they would actually answer questions honestly and engage the people asking them rather than spewing out the typical bullshit, I'd have gained more respect for them. They aren't acting like they're talking to people here. I don't mind seeing this kind of tone in press releases and such, but don't pretend you're going to give an honest "Ask Me Anything" style Q/A session when it's just free marketing. I think they're shooting themselves in the foot here, mostly. Until the IE9 AMA, I was considering trying it out, but their tone completely turned me off of it.

shub• 16 years ago

To make a long story short, IE9 is fast but very beta. Now you don't need to try it!

pavel_lishin• 16 years ago

They sent a marketer to do a developer's job."

rbanffy2• 16 years ago

If you observe their history carefully, you will see they do it all the time.

I have worked with Site Server 3 in the late 90's and I can assure you no sane developer would have created such a monstrosity. That was, probably, the work of a marketer.

nck4222• 16 years ago

I agree, and on a related note I think part of it boils down to know your audience. They had marketers going and talk to a group who are largely power users. Of course the audience is going to be disappointed.

csomar• 16 years ago

I was a Hotmail Fan, until (at 2005-2006) one time, I didn't log for 3 months or so. All my inbox was recycled. I have only 4 Mb of Emails. They are hosting emails, few conversations and accounts information.

It messed me up, as I lost lot of info; I decided not to use it again, even though I was happy with the experience (light Email user). I moved to gmail by begging random users to send me an invite. I was amazed with the storage and also with the experience and I still use the same inbox to that day.

sebg• 16 years ago

A really interesting comment was the following: "To possibly refine the thought: both Microsoft and Google want people to spend time on their sites. Microsoft tries to get people to spend time on their site by giving them reasons to not leave. Google tries to get people to spend time on their site by giving them reasons to come back." Not only for the web but also for life, jobs, health, etc. The google attitude, I would posit, is the right way to live.

ry0ohki• 16 years ago

It's pretty sad that Hotmail is trying to reach out to the tech community, and their comments and getting so far down voted on Reddit (-500 for one comment at time of writing this)

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

I dislike the downvoting too, but there's a reason for it. People are raising valid critiques about Hotmail (that the Hotmail team specifically asked for!) and their only response was "well, why would anyone want all of that anyways?"

They're clueless, that's why they're getting downvoted. Re: their complete and utter cluelessness when it comes to IMAP support, someone basically summarized up the reasoning in a single sentence, that the Hotmail team hasn't realized in years of managing this product:

"ActiveSync? srsly? Does it work with my Android phone? With an iPhone? With anything else than Windows?"

macmaxbh• 16 years ago

Yes, because they're actually talking about Exchange ActiveSync. http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv...

EAS is a protocol specifically for mobile phones, and Android, iPhone, Palm all support it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Exchange_ActiveSy...

u48998• 16 years ago

I'm not a fan/user of Hotmail but what I don't understand is why people compare it to Gmail, or why people compare one service to another? If there are limitations and issues, than discuss on its own merits.

spazmaster• 16 years ago

I e-mailed Steve Ballmer with this brilliant idea and got a response. Hope he'll get on it.

https://skitch.com/danielspronk/rrc2s/inbox-14307-messages

pkamb• 16 years ago

Regarding branding: I had a huge "woah" moment a couple months ago when I realized (via wikipedia) that hotmail = HoTMaiL = HTML.

Not sure how much cash would be involved in that acquisition, but @html.com would be a cool rebrand that I think tech-minded people would appreciate.

drlew• 16 years ago

on hotmail delivery stops after 270 days account expires after 1 year. this doesn't mean there isn't room to improve.

its 270 day expiration for gmail, I believe.

not sure for others

Hotmail development team on Reddit

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