Hotmail, where do you want to go today?

April Fools' Day 2005, anniversary of Google GMail, the technology avant-garde announced his new free GMail offering - a dynamically growing storage capacity, at a speed of about 30 bytes per second exactly. Although someone regarded it as a little trick from Google, the new feature is still cool enough to attract most internet surfers' eyes. Accompanying with the fantastical feature, a new rich text email editor debuted at the same day. Both of them will help Google retain its predominance in the competition with Yahoo!, Hotmail and other free email service providers. On the contrary, it's really hard to see innovations from Hotmail, which has considerably lagged behide. Regretful, isn't it?

In Giga-Mail age, some of Hotmail's features are really troublesome or even untolerable. Here are those that trouble me most:

1. The extremely limited storage space - 2MB. Yep, it said that the Inbox space will be upgraded to 250 MB. But most Hotmail uses are still in the very looooooong waiting list and hopelessly find their inbox is so limited that can only send and receive pure text messages.
2. The insufficient support to contacts locating. When you compose a new mail in GMail or Microsoft Outlook, the system will help you locate the propriate contacts by popping up a draw down list. It's really handy. But in hotmail, you have to choose the contacts from the long list or type the email address exactly by youself.
3. It's impossible to block junk mails from contacts. Some of my contacts joined some 3rd party organizations and gave out their .NET Passports. So I keep receiving junk mails from those orgs who sent mails representing the contact and I have no idea about blocking spams come from them.
4. It doesn't support POP and SMTP access. No need to explain more...
5. I hate the ad images and flashes glittering almost everywhere.

In now days, free EMail service is still very attractive to most internet surfers. Thanks to Hotmail's long history and its seamless integration with MSN Messenger, it has congregated millions of users. I hope Hotmail can retain and consolidate its strength by taking more innovations and catch up with its competitors in near future.

Where does Hotmail want to go? I'll keep my eyes open.