Huge internet companies ignore progress
It is hard to imagine that even in our time of high technology there are places which the progress can not reach. Besides the more coming progress theoretically can reduce the possible income, the more that progress is restrained by means of all existing ways.
As you know, the most of free e-mail services exist because of advertising earnings that is shown to the Users in the web-interface of mailbox. That’s why the Internet web giants of web industry are not in a hurry to give a free access to mailboxes through the POP3 and SMTP protocols. No doubt they wouldn’t want the effectiveness of their advertising to be reduced greatly.Such giants as Yahoo.com, MSN.com, and AOL.com have many users who are attached to other services of the companies and they are being slow to provide users with such access, just because people got used to use the web interface.
Of cause there are some ways to avoid these limitations. For example, there are programs of third-party writers for www.Yahoo.com who convert the web-traffic into POP3. But this increases the possibility of password stealing with the help of that program, and that reduces the willing to use it. For Hotmail.com by www.MSN.com there is a possibility to use a special protocol, which is integrated into Outlook Express, and is not available to other email program developers, which also limits the user’s freedom to choose an email program. www.AOL.com has an access through POP3 and SMTP, but it is available for users to have an access to the Internet only from that provider. That also limits the opportunities of using an email, because there are places without an access to the Internet from AOL.com.
But, they lose a lot trying to hold the old marketing policy oriented for on-line publicity limiting the users choice. There is another way to monetize visitors, attracting users and keeping them. Such new model of user treatment was Google.com Company and its e-mail service - Gmail.com. Initially they provide users access to POP3 and SMTP interfaces not restricting user in methods of work with e-mail. However this service has a great advantage over common mailing applications like Outlook Express - it is a big volume of mailbox disk space allowing user to keep all the e-mails straight at the server and get access to its’ mailbox from any part of the world.Plus, only relevant advertising is shown to a user, no bothering banners! This format is becoming more and more likable for email users because a convenient web interface allows you to forget about installing and setting problems of email programs.
As a result the email systems we will know in the future will be web interfaces, without actually using any email programs. And most likely Yahoo.com, MSN.com and AOL.com will use this model later because that method is much more advantageous than outdated ways of using email programs.POP3 and SMTP protocols are obsolete themselves. For instance, the Gmail.com provides new e-mails reception notifications via special RSS channel.