Maximize ROI: Conversion Funnel Design & A/B Testing

10/07/2004 - Thursday, October 07, 2004 -   

The end of FREE Hotmail in Outlook Is Here

If you've enjoyed the ability to check your free Hotmail account from within a Microsoft e-mail program (like Outlook Express, Outlook or Entourage), better get out your credit card. In the coming weeks, Microsoft will gradually shut down that feature. The reason: Microsoft says that spammers have begun exploiting the underlying technology of this feature; something called the WebDAV protocol, to blast out their commercial messages.

Once again, you, the consumer, pay the price. From now on, if you want to check your free e-mail account, you'll have to go to the Hotmail Web site to do it — or pay Microsoft $20 a year (the cost of an upgrade to Hotmail Extra Storage) to maintain the feature that used to be free.