History and Background
When the Web became a significant public communications medium in the 1990s, many saw it as an excellent opportunity for an individual and instantaneous interaction system - e-mail. Numerous totally free email providers arrived, however the first major gamer was Microsoft, with the release of Hotmail. Qualcomm soon launched Eudora, followed by Yahoo and just recently, Google. Therefore the race to supply the most rewarding and popular email service started
Microsoft Hotmail -
This has constantly been the most popular email service on the web. It's success is primarily due to huge publicity, worldwide services and has now become almost the default e-mail service for starting Web users. If you desire an email, you go to Hotmail. It was hardly threatened by other business until the current launch of Google's Gmail. A year or so earlier, Hotmail used a measly 2 MB storage for e-mail Then out of the blue, Gmail introduced a huge 1 GB e-mail.
service for public usage. Luckily for Hotmail, Gmail is currently in beta and only offered through an invite based signup. Hotmail has now increased e-mail capacity to 250 MB in an effort to competing Gmail.
Personally, I don't like Hotmail. It's pages load slower than other suppliers. Ads are discovered literally all over. Even with 250MB, the capacity is still small in comparison to Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Being the largest supplier of email, it is also the most targeted by hackers and unauthorized users.
On the other hand it has the backing of Microsoft, has typically high quality spam and infection filters, has nice HTML e-mail features and also works perfectly with other Microsoft items such as MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces.
Google Gmail -
Released as an invite only beta on April 1, 2004 (no it was not an April Fool's joke) Gmail made free email history when it announced that its brand-new email service would boast an enormous 1GB of complimentary e-mail storage. This was 500 times what Hotmail and 250 times what Yahoo provided at the time and therefore users all over the world just could not get enough of Gmail. People who were fortunate sufficient to receive an invitation were generally terrific beta testers, however some started selling these invitations on sites like eBay. I myself was lucky enough to get an invite from Gmail in its early stages. At the time most users were offered no greater than 10 invitations to distribute. Today I have 50, with rapidly replenishment of these after use.
Personally, I enjoy Gmail. It's got a clean and quick user interface, with very easy to utilize features. It's storage is terrific, but couple of users will ever utilize even half of the area. It's spam filters are great, but I would need to say Hotmail did a much better job. POP and IMAP access are now available, as well as e-mail forwarding.
But even Gmail has its cons. It does not have thorough HTML email support, both for viewing and making up. It does not have some typical functions in other email services, such as an option of spam filter level, the ability to garbage messages easily and likewise does not work well (works only in plain HTML mode) with Opera and other older browsers.
Likewise there have actually been 2 personal privacy problems raised with Gmail. Firstly, the unobtrusive and normally clean looking advertisements on the right of a lot of pages are contextual. This suggests these advertisements are created based upon page content, or in this case email content. For that reason every time you view an e-mail, you're e-mail content is examined and then converted into advertisements for Google's revenue. According to Google, this is all done by robots not humans, and therefore the email is never ever read by any people, but none the less, lots of users get gone crazy when they see their e-mail posted in ad-form on the right of the screen.
The other personal privacy issue is that of trashed messages. With 1GB of space, Gmail encourages users not to delete check out messages, however just to archive them for later viewing. If a user chooses to trash a message anyhow, their is a stipulation in the Gmail personal privacy policy which triggers some disagreement. The clause mentions that after deletion of an www.hotmail.com log in email, Google can keep it in storage for as long as it wishes. For that reason, when you trash a message and expect it to be gone permanently, it could be just simply resting on a Google server, waiting to be accessed by unapproved users.
Many are connecting Gmail with offering your soul to the devil. Will you fall under a 1GB storage temptation to sell your personal privacy? Well I personally do not believe these privacy allegations, however you have to comprise your own mind.
Also please let me tell you that since April 1, 2005, Google upgraded all email accounts to 2GB storage, and as an included gimmick, that quantity is continuously growing at approximately 3.5 MB a day (this rate continuously changes). Since the 6th of August, 2005, the size of all Gmail accounts was at 2465 MB.
Since Gmail is currently in invitation-only beta, if you wish to sign up with, please utilize this Gmail Invite Request Kind and I will gladly send you an invitation.
Yahoo Mail -
Yahoo Mail is presently the 2nd biggest e-mail provider in the world, simply behind Hotmail. Prior to Gmail was introduced, it offered 4MB of area to free users, double what Hotmail provided. To compete with Google's Gmail, Yahoo has actually now increased their e-mail capability to an enormous 1GB. Of course, because Gmail increased their accounts to 2GB, Yahoo is still second to the brand-new email giant.
Disregarding storage area for a while, Yahoo Mail is a pretty robust email service. It's advertisements are considerably smaller sized and less obtrusive than Hotmail's, and is not contextual like Gmail's. It's user interface is slower than Gmail's and around the same speed as that of Hotmail. It has very good spam and virus filters, and likewise works excellent with other Yahoo items such as Yahoo Messenger. Likewise when you sign up for Yahoo Mail, your Yahoo ID can be used for practically whatever else Yahoo.
It has extremely few cons too. The advertisements are in some cases fancy and your pages may fill slower because of them however that's the only real drawback. So maybe Yahoo is your e-mail service choice.
Conclusion
Even if some of you desire me to, I will not blatantly mention the very best e-mail service here. This is because I do not think there is such thing as the * finest * when it comes to email services. I personally like Gmail, but there are millions out there that would disagree with me. Some individuals love the simplicity of Gmail, the assistance of Hotmail or the terrific spam filters of Yahoo. You have to make a choice based upon your liking and your needs. So proceed and discover on your own what e-mail service is best for you.