The End of Hotmail - Never Looking Back

http://www.alexwilhelm.com/alex_wilhelm/2009/02/the-end-of-hotmail-never-looking-back.html

by warkaiser • 17 years ago

16 13 17 years ago

The world is moving to Gmail, about damn time.

For the company I work for (hotmail|live|msn) addresses come third, making up about 1 in 5 users. That’s actually more than I would have expected, and I suspect is largely due to the audience not being very technically savvy.

GMail just pips Yahoo to the top, both making up about 1 in 3 users each.

Hotmail seems to just magically disappear e-mails at random; they never end up arriving with our customers. Yahoo frequently “defer” delivery until later which can be very annoying when sending out verification e-mails. We’ve never had any problems with GMail delivery at all.

Following the advice on the pages below has helped resolve some of these issues, but if I were a user of these services I’d rather receive the odd spam e-mail or it end up in the junk folder instead of having to wonder if e-mails were occasionally going missing.

http://postmaster.msn.com/

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/basics/post...

warkaiser3• 17 years ago

I know, I have only had two emails ever sent incorrectly to spam by gmail.

pj• 17 years ago

I prefer not to have google reading my emails.

warkaiser3• 17 years ago

You mind when the robot spiders them? Idk, doesn't bother me.

jonknee• 17 years ago

Microsoft reads your emails too. Any service that has junk mail filters does. Gmail just does it more effectively.

l0stman• 17 years ago

This isn't enough reason for me. You could encrypt your emails if you don't want google to read them.

scott_s• 17 years ago

I ceded long ago that email is not a private communication medium. Even when the communication of the message itself is encrypted (which on Gmail it is), the messages probably sit as plain text on the email server. More people than I can count can read my Gmail messages - but the same is true for my school email, was true for my ancient Juno account, and is true for anyone using an email account through their ISP.

enra• 17 years ago

I love Gmail, but still wonder if this is the hotmail deal all over again. Hotmail was once great as well. To mimize risks, I use my own domains as addresses and take frequent backups.

potatolicious2• 17 years ago

Privacy and evilness issues aside, there's always the problem that what was once awesome and free is unlikely to stay so forever. New policies (max attachment sizes, storage restrictions) etc can also ruin the service.

I pay a very small amount to have my own mail server on my own domain. It is unlikely to ever change (great for long-term networking) and I control exactly how crappy or excellent the service is.

Considering how important email is to each of us in our daily lives, even non-hackers, I'm surprised more people don't pay for it.

warkaiser3• 17 years ago

I don't mind paying for the service, I would pay for Gmail. But now that they allow people to download all their email, I see no reason to run my own server.

cool-RR• 17 years ago

I have my own domain too, in a shared server. But I set mine up to forward to my G-Mail account. How can one get a good mail interface if not through G-Mail?

alexkay• 17 years ago

I use my own domains and Gmail through Google Apps. I also backup frequently with an IMAP fetcher.

This setup gives me the best web mail client without vendor lock in, I can switch to my own server any time I want and keep all email addresses.

The End of Hotmail - Never Looking Back

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