I was one of the earliest users of Hotmail – back then it was sort of revolutionary that you could access email via a web browser and not depend on massive server banks running Exchange.
At the time I was running a large data center and the Exchange Admins were under my org chart – meaning all the crazy legal stuff that had to be dealt when someone decided to use their work email for porn, harassing their ex-spouse, or cheating on their current spouse. Oh, fun times… fun times. (I did escort the FBI into my building once…) I decided to hold a corporate class and teach everyone how to sign up and use their own PERSONAL email address via HoTMaiL. To this day I will never understand why people would use their work email (that is scanned, backed up, and and available to be easily monitored if the need arrises) when there are so many free email systems out there (Gmail of course being my favorite).
I distinctly remember thinking that when Microsoft bought them it meant all email would be 'in the browser' (we now mostly consider it 'cloud'). Email – and the viruses they carry – are the bane of the existence to every IT support team, but also keep a lot of them employed.
While enterprise email hasn't quite completely taken the leap (I hear Google Apps is kicking the snot out of Microsoft Exchange in new 1k-5k seat companies) 20 years later they are finally doing SOMETHING with it.
Never did have a Yahoo email account though 😉
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Microsoft Outlook: how Hotmail lost its cool
Hotmail still busiest webmail site in terms of internet traffic but recent stagnation prompted decision to relaunch as Outlook
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I have a yahoo account only because they purchased flicker 😛
But I also remember when hot mail came out. I used to run a number of mailing lists and they were immediately hit with lads spam from faked hotmail accounts….
I remember my first Hotmail account over 12 years ago.
Hotmail was definitely revolutionary for me at the time as well. The freedom to send myself a document/presentation and have access to it anywhere I was able to access the Internet was huge at the time.
It is interesting to me that with the advent of Gmail, it's (relatively) unlimited storage as well as cloud apps, Hotmail has been relegated to more of a spam account role for myself and a large number of my associates.
Signing up for something where 3rd party mailings can't be avoided? Hotmail is great for that. 😉
I still have my hotmail.com address registered in 1999, it's mostly for nostalgia these days, it's full of spam and the interface is horrible. I couldn't imagine using it for primary when there's better alternatives out there.
Pardon the typos — still getting used to the nexus 7 interface and I can't edit here either, as with a mobile interface :-P. That should have been "loads of spam".
I have a yahoo account, but the ".geo" at the end of it earns me street cred for being a converted e-mail from geocities… and by street-cred, I mean 'confusing looks by users who want to know what .geo means.'
Sad that having a geocities used to be as cool as having a 4-5 digit ICQ number.
AS
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Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I find it a hassle to switch to a new email address when I've been using a perfectly serviceable account for years. I have the obligatory GMail account, but I kept my old hotmail account so I wouldn't have to update all the places I use the thing to a new address. Such a bother.
+Andrea Chalk totally makes sense… I kept hotmail to use for legacy, I kept yahoo to use for forum signups and spammy things, I use my gmail for person/person stuff.
Just makes sense to segregate them
i actually obtain various different addresses at different places, mostly to prevent people from getting email addresses similar to mine. Some years back, I had some real headaches with someone who got X@Y.com and posed as me at X@Z.com. So I do actually pick up X at new places — just did so at outlook.com, regardless of the teethgritting that took ;-). I tend to do that with new social services, too. (That explains my pinterest and instagram accounts :-P)
+Cindy Brown I've done that as well… and agreed, there is much teeth-gritting involved… .my Twitter account has one post "So this is twitter."
heh :-). A few of them did grow on me (twitter was one) but others i'm afraid will remain forever rather dusty (such as instagram and pinterest…)
I've had hotmail since 96. I still maintain it only in so far as I forward everything from hotmail to Gmail. I suppose I could redirect everything but it's a hassle. My yahoo account was originally a rocketmail account. At this point yahoo is a junk account. It needs to go.