12th Dec 2004, 09:09 AM
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#112 (permalink)
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Join Date: 12 May 2003 Location: $g
Posts: 4,274
Reputation: -163 Rep Power: 0 | 
Quote:
Pssst! Do you use hotmail? Are you still struggling to cope with using 2MB? Wanna be the first to have it upgraded to 250MB within the week… for free?
When Google entered the free email service market with its Gmail, it made a huge splash by offering 1GB of free storage which made the other free email services like Yahoo and Microsoft scrambling to remain competitive against Google.
Within weeks, Yahoo announced its upgrade to 100MB, followed by Hotmail's announcement that it will be giving 250MB. At the time, Yahoo was offering 4MB while Hotmail was offering 2MB. Both services charged subscription fees for people who wanted more memory.
The shakeup brought about by competition was so severe that market analysts came out and said that free email services can no longer depend on memory space as a revenue stream. Indeed, with the increase, it may not even be a competitive advantage… until the users start to stuff up their accounts again. Everybody in the industry was terribly excited by the freebies. And with the recent mega-IPO by Google fresh in their minds, people were predicting the return of the "good old days" of free money and free-flowing beer again.
But that was in April.
After Google's IPO, no other mega tech IPO came about and it was marked off as an anomaly. Everyone in the City and Big Apple went back to the drudge. And the Promised Land offered by Hotmail and Yahoo hardly made a ripple in Asia.
But it is out there.
Not that long ago, Microsoft announced that all of Hotmail's existing users in major markets such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Italy would be getting their 250MB of storage soon. But, for some reason, not for Singapore and the rest of the world.
Okay, so here is what you, the readers staying in sunny Singapore, can do to get your grubby hands on the free 250MB of storage.
This is my personal experience. What I did was to change my profile in Hotmail and do a quick "virtual immigration" to the United States, and settle in a nice area I've seen in a postcard. And voila, within a week, when I woke up from my beauty sleep, my overflowing 2MB email became a roomy 250MB account.
And if you, like me, don't care to read about the weather reports in United States and worry more about whether you will be caught in the rain in balmy Singapore, you can switch your profile back and do another quick "virtual migration" back to Singapore. Don't worry, your account will remain at 250MB. At least it has for me, for the past three weeks.
While Microsoft may have its own reasons for staggering the release, we have our own personal needs to take care of.
So if you are thinking of doing a quick virtual migration as well, you might want to consider moving into my old place in San Francisco, California, Zip Code 94111.
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