I have all but stopped using HOTMAIL because of its slowness, lockin, and poor filtering. I still use the ID for MSN, but otherwise I have deleted my account twice.
MS policy is quite simple, let the product atrophy until such times as its use is seriously enough curtailed that users either sign up for their paid service or flock to other free email services. The product atrophy process encapsulates 1. benign neglect 2. minimal improvement and 3. feature lockdown (things disappear without announcement).
It’s clear that MS doesn’t consider Hotmail an important part of their strategy, despite the success other companies have made of their free services. It really is a warning about MS products in general, there is no real commitment to improvement, except when there’s a ton of money at stake. It’s like , no real commitment to customer support, no real commitment to producing and providing customers with the products they need.
If you don’t believe me about this, just look back>… I used to use MS Works 4.0 then 4.5. Both were seriously useful, though not as good as ClarisWorks. Then the feature rot set in, with Version 5 (useless and buggy), Version 6 (not very useful and very buggy), and Version 7 (mmm!). Despite the inclusion of certain HTML features in the later versions, overall functionality decreased, stability decreased, and the notion of it providing a bottom of the market entry to Word processing (and indeed Word) fell away. Now MSWorks in any form is barely superior to Write, and is easily outshone by many a freeware offering.
I understood why they did it, but I regretted that decision very much. Hotmail is going the same way… One wonders what will happen to the other recent hits from MS, like MSN Groups, Search, News website, MSN itself, …
Kenneth