One of the things which people rarely get about free email is why free email providers would bother offering free email at all. After all, what do the free email providers get out of it?
Well, for starters, they get millions of eyeballs looking intently at a screen which they control. Witness, for example, the context-targeted ads which are served up every time you look at your email in Gmail. Not only that, but they have advertisers paying them to be in front of your eyeballs.
But if you still doubt that free email services are important to the free email providers – probably far more so than they are important to you – consider the wording of the plaque recently presented by management to the Yahoo! Mail team. The plaque, while certainly tongue-in-cheek, aptly demonstrates the fact that above all, free email is a commercial, competitive product, just like any other:
“Presented to the Yahoo! Mail Team by the good people of Yahoo! in recognition of tremendous intellectual effort put forth in order to defeat Gmail.
Not since the code breakers in Britain’s Bletchley Park deciphered Germany’s Enigma code during World War II has so much brainpower been focused on kicking an enemy’s ass.
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The Yahoo! Mail Team’s bravery, courage, and cumulative intelligence will not soon be forgotten. (At least not until the newer version of Yahoo! Mail is released.)”
Still doubt that free email is worth something?
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I use free email. It’s free for goodness sake..
To avoid the ads they put in with the email I just black out the top and edges of my glasses. An erasable marker works best..
… ‘consider the plaque recently presented by management to the Yahoo! Mail team.’ … Which plague is this? I must have missed an earlier article but I’m not really sure what this is in reference to.