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".<p>That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could come home to find <i>10 years</i> 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 <i>that important</i>?<p>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.
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.
From the Hotmail team:
"Really quickly, want to address the IMAP questions that have come up.<p><pre><code> 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"
</code></pre>
Either their user base doesn't know any better (likely) or they have an extremely skewed view of the market (likely).
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.<p>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?
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.<p>They just keep getting defensive about their decisions of deleting peoples email, not supporting IMAP etc.
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:<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dk3s0/the_ie9_team_responds_to_your_questions/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dk3s0/the_ie9_te...</a>
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.
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.<p>Which is not necessarily a bad thing to do IMO.
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.
I e-mailed Steve Ballmer with this brilliant idea and got a response. Hope he'll get on it.<p><a href="https://skitch.com/danielspronk/rrc2s/inbox-14307-messages" rel="nofollow">https://skitch.com/danielspronk/rrc2s/inbox-14307-messages</a>
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.<p>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.
Regarding branding: I had a huge "woah" moment a couple months ago when I realized (via wikipedia) that hotmail = HoTMaiL = HTML.<p>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.
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)
on hotmail delivery stops after 270 days account expires after 1 year. this doesn't mean there isn't room to improve.<p>its 270 day expiration for gmail, I believe.<p>not sure for others
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.