A nostalgic look at Yahoo! Mail's early days: the playful interface, the small revolutions (address books, filters, free web access) and how a generation learned to live online through a blue-and-white inbox.
A nostalgic deep-dive into the features that made Hotmail a webmail revolution - the cheeky HoTMaiL name, the 'Free Web-Based Email' promise, colorful themes, early filters and spam defenses - and how those design choices shaped the inboxes we use today.
Hotmail arrived like a tiny revolution - free, web-based email you could access anywhere. It grew fast, got bought by Microsoft, then stumbled as the web matured. This piece traces Hotmail's climb, its complacent plateau, and the lessons the tech world still ignores.