[j45]

Sorry wideroots, I was referring to the late 90's early 2000's where Microsoft started charging for Hotmail "Pro".

If you didn't login every 90 days your free account would disappear. This was after Hotmail itself was built up to hundreds of millions of users with only free users.

At this time they were the main web email provider as well as Yahoo.

[Zenst]

Yes I remember that, was involved in a client scraper that would pull the email via webmail interface so could merge into a mobile device stream. Microsoft kept changing and tweaking there web interface just enough to make it a rather annoying battle to keep up with the cheapskate route.

Guess Google has hit saturation point and are now trying to leveridge some services as a package instead of just gaining income from ad's.

Still at least getting some notice, albiet timed rather interestingly right before the holiday season and also after the canges to there app accounts.