Internet giants: Yahoo, MSN and AOL vs. Gmail
It’s hard to imagine that there are some places unreachable for progress in the age of Hi-Tech. Moreover, the more this progress can reduce possible profit, the longer time they are restraining it by all available means.
It’s known that most free email services exist on profits from advertising that is shown to users in the email account web interface. That is the reason why does internet giants of web-industry do not hurry to made the free access for e-mail by means of protocols POP3 and SMTP, because then the effects of their publicity will decrease, and they do not want that.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 course, there are ways to avoid these limits. For instance there is third parties’ software for Yahoo.com converting 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 by 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. AOL.com provides access via POP3 and SMTP, but only to the clients that are connected to this ISP, this is also bounds the e-mail usage area as AOL.com provides its ISP services only in certain areas.
Still they loose a lot when trying to follow out of date marketing policy directed to online-advertising constraining user’s freedom of choice. There is another way to monetize guests by attracting and keeping users. A company Google.com with its email Gmail.com has become this new model. Users have the access to POP3 and SMTP interfaces, which does not limit the user’s opportunities to work with the email. But the service has a big advantage before ordinary mail clients like Outlook Express - that is big post mailbox and all the letters can be stored at the server without problems that allows the user to have access for the mailbox from the 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 e-mail of the Future performs as web-interface without the use of mail applications. Most probably Yahoo.com, MSN.com and AOL.com will use this model in the future, because such approach better than the old methodic with the using of mail programs.Basically POP3 and SMTP become even obsolete; the Gmail.com provides new e-mails reception notifications via RSS channels.