[zdfjkhiuj]

Someone with a HotMail account has managed to keep a consistent address for about twenty years. That is a good thing. The idea that they should ditch HotMail for the functionally equivalent GMail just because GMail is popular is, of course, idiotic.

But this is an insurance company, so it is plausible that they crunched the numbers and found a real effect.

[Alex3917]

I still log into my old Hotmail account every few months just to keep it from getting deleted. It’s a complete piece of shit, it’s not even usable let alone comparable in any way to gmail.

[executesorder66]

If it's a complete piece of shit, why do you want to prevent it from being deleted?

[0xcde4c3db]

In my case, I've maintained old email addresses when:

1) A website ties accounts to email addresses and doesn't allow changing them, and

2) the email provider recycles expired addresses, i.e. a new user could sign up for my old address.

[Alex3917]

For historical reasons, in case there were ever some account on some rarely used service where I forgot to change the email, and in case I ever need to build something on the MS Graph API.

[tobltobs]

maybe he has a forward to a usable email account.

[skinnymuch]

Are you using outlook.com? How is it a complete piece of shit? Microsoft improved it quite a bit. It’s different than Gmail, but far from awful.

[Markoff]

I find outlook.com aka hotmail vastly superior to cluttered gmail, are your sure you even tried it?

[JauntyHatAngle]

>The idea that they should ditch HotMail for the functionally equivalent GMail just because GMail is popular is, of course, idiotic.

I think the "functionally equivalent" part is quite arguable, at least it was in the past when many techies made the switch from hotmail to gmail.

People switched because the features and interface were far superior.

[zdfjkhiuj]

>People switched because the features and interface were far superior.

No one should use the web interface, let alone "techies." Use a real email client and everything behaves identically.

[JauntyHatAngle]

Not really, portability was not easy to accomplish back then when you were constantly shifting between work stations and different setups.

Even to this day, I don't know of an easy way to switch between fresh devices all the time and use a "real" email client.

I don't see the problem with someone preferring gmail - personally the +suffix tagging was what I still use to this day.

[sniglom]

Well, you could also see it like, somebody not interested in switching to better alternatives, even after 20 years.

Say, driving a 20 year old car even though there are safer alternatives available.

[acct1771]

Or...too lacking in ambition to find a proper service and forward the previous address?

[icebraining]

Lacking in ambition sounds good from an actuarial point of view.