
Hotmail development team on Reddit - netaddict
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ej32l/we_are_the_hotmail_development_team_lets_talk/c18gp4r?context=1
======
cryptoz
I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail
developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of
inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day
or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30,
now it's 270".

That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa
for a while, you could come home to find _10 years_ of email deleted. Who
would stay with an email service that does that? Microsoft just doesn't get
that users want to be happy. Are the $ savings MS gets from disk space of old
deleted emails really _that important_?

Edit: Maybe this is a feature Facebook should implement. They ask for your
Hotmail login and password anyway, they may as well say "Microsoft will delete
your emails! But don't worry, we'll save them for you". Maybe then MS would
take a hint and remove the "delete user's email now" code.

~~~
GavinB
I basically agree with you, but I'm guessing that the important thing isn't
saving disk space, but freeing up usernames.

~~~
cryptoz
> but freeing up usernames.

WHAT?! They do that? That's SO dangerous, and perhaps what made me lose a
domain name three years ago! I registered a domain in 2001 with my hotmail
account, and noticed in 2006 that the registration had changed to another
person in Ontaio, Canada. My only guess as to how they did that (after _much_
investigation) was that they must have accessed my hotmail account, which was
dormant for probably three years (but was the account I used with my
registrar). I couldn't figure out how they got into my email, and I eventually
gave up the fight and got a new domain name. Now I'm waiting out the
expiration on the first one, hoping I can get it back.

Do they ACTUALLY recycle usernames? Is THAT how I lost my domain name?!
Someone just registered my old hotmail account back, and then probably "lost
password" to the account? Fuck that makes me so mad. There's no way MS does
this...does anyone know?

~~~
Locke1689
Yup, I think user accounts are recycled. It's got its benefits and its
downsides. I think it will be interesting to see 80 years from now. I guess
non-recycled usernames will just get more esoteric?

~~~
dflock
Yeah, there are a lot of characters in the full unicode set.

~~~
Locke1689
There are far fewer human-readable combinations. There are even fewer with
fewer than 10 characters.

------
jokermatt999
Some good lessons about PR can be learned here. For one, don't use your normal
marketing tone/marketing speak in a candid Q/A session like this one. The IE9
AMA and this AMA have done more to make me lose respect for Microsoft than
anything else I've seen from them (although, I should note that I'm not old
enough to have been around in their true "evil empire" style days). If they
would actually answer questions honestly and engage the people asking them
rather than spewing out the typical bullshit, I'd have gained more respect for
them. They aren't acting like they're talking to people here. I don't mind
seeing this kind of tone in press releases and such, but don't pretend you're
going to give an honest "Ask Me Anything" style Q/A session when it's just
free marketing. I think they're shooting themselves in the foot here, mostly.
Until the IE9 AMA, I was considering trying it out, but their tone completely
turned me off of it.

~~~
pavel_lishin
They sent a marketer to do a developer's job."

~~~
rbanffy
If you observe their history carefully, you will see they do it all the time.

I have worked with Site Server 3 in the late 90's and I can assure you no sane
developer would have created such a monstrosity. That was, probably, the work
of a marketer.

------
cshenoy
From the Hotmail team: "Really quickly, want to address the IMAP questions
that have come up.

    
    
        We haven't implemented imap since based on the user feedback and usage data, there isn't a large enough need when you look at the other protocols we provide. for mobile - we believe activesync is the best story. it gives you mail, calendar, and contacts. there is big adoption of the protocol here with android, iphone, and windows mobile. for clients - with the outlook connector, windows live mail client, and pop3, we cover the majority of client scenarios. there are definitely some gaps, but not enough to outweigh the cost. one of the tough trade offs we make. let me know if that doesn't answer the question. -ryan"
    

Either their user base doesn't know any better (likely) or they have an
extremely skewed view of the market (likely).

~~~
larrik
As a consultant, I ran into a LOT of people who preferred POP3 on their phones
and non-main devices. They just wanted to have as little email on their phone
as possible (which also gives you decent security if the phone is lost).

Combine this with the fact that Outlook is just terrible with IMAP, and I
didn't find too many regular users who liked it.

Personally, I wouldn't use anything else, of course.

~~~
thwarted
How does the choice of protocol determine if there is as little email on non-
mail devices as possible? Also, I've seen people screw up POP3 configuration
so the mail _moves_ to the downloading device (because it gets deleted from
the server after downloading, as they didn't choose the "leave mail on server"
option). If your phone is continuously checking for and downloading mail, that
_less_ security in the event your phone is lost, because copies of your email
potentially exist in multiple places. With POP3, everything is copied (or
moved) and you don't get a choice to only download some messages (after
looking at subject lines or sender names) and leave some messages on the
server.

~~~
larrik
True, looking back I forgot to include the part where they obsessively delete
each email from their device after reading it.

The "Leave Mail" option is very important as well, especially when they really
just want to leave the mail on the server long enough to get it on multiple
devices (especially their main desktop), but the server has absurd size caps.

It's often a case of their expectations having already been set by their
history with POP3, so anything working different is not what they want.

------
ShabbyDoo
I hope the Hotmail team follows through with answering questions. When the IE
team offered to answer questions on Reddit, they quit after a few hours.

The questions I had asked was (summarized): Most IE6 usage seems to be from
large corps, and much of their resistance to upgrading is due to internal apps
which only work correctly on IE6. Why doesn't Microsoft offer a standalone IE6
distro which could be installed alongside IE8/9 and used for the few apps
holding back company-wide upgrades?

~~~
dflock
Companies with these locked down Win2K/XP/ie6 desktops wouldn't install that,
because that would be work, which costs money. If they saw ie6 as a problem
and were willing to put in any effort whatsoever to fix it, they would have
done so long ago.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I consulted for a company which had well over 10K managed desktops with
XP/IE6. They are in the process of upgrading to IE8 and would be delighted if
they could just install it in place of IE6 and go on with life. However, the
upgrade team identified well over 70 internal apps, some written in-house and
some vendor-provided, which required IE6 to function properly. Some suitable
strategy must be identified for each: fix, replace, decommission, etc. If they
could install a standalone version of IE6 just for these apps, they could
upgrade to IE8 now and fix them over time.

To those who know something about IE6's "architecture": How hard is such an
idea given that you are Microsoft? What if the standalone app could be
constrained to work only with known-safe websites so that security upgrades
were not so essential?

~~~
dflock
If you were Microsoft, it would be trivial, provided you hadn't based your
legal anti-trust defence on saying this was impossible. If you had, for
example, done that, then it's obviously 'impossible'. Also, their revenue
model only works if they can keep selling you upgrades all the time - no
profit in fixing the old shit.

There a lots of pieces of 3rd party software that mess around with IE in ways
that MS have claimed are not possible and go part of the way towards what you
want:

Uninstall IE from Windows: <http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html>

Have multiple stand-alone versions if IE installed:
<http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE>, <http://www.my-
debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage>, [http://blog.donavon.com/2009/08/run-
ie6-ie7-and-ie8-side-by-...](http://blog.donavon.com/2009/08/run-ie6-ie7-and-
ie8-side-by-side-on.html)

Virtualise your way out - run different versions of IE in VM's:
[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef&displaylang=en)

Once you can run multiple versions of IE on the same machine, and you're
controlling which browsers are installed, redirecting traffic to one or the
other is just matter of a simple browser plugin on both that has a
black/whitelist and redirects to the appropriate browser. Done. Ms could get
an intern to code this up, if they actually wanted to.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I had not considered Microsoft's legal need for consistency with statements
made in past anti-trust cases. Was the company's argument that IE was not
extricable from Windows or that Windows could not function without a tightly-
integrated browser? I had thought the argument was the latter, and, if so, I
don't see why Microsoft could not provide IE6 as a stand-alone browser while
leaving IE8/9/whatever tightly integrated with the OS.

"Also, their revenue model only works if they can keep selling you upgrades
all the time"

I think the need for IE6 hurts the velocity of Windows 7 upgrades, especially
for large accounts.

~~~
dflock
It doesn't seem to be hurting them that much, profits wise - and certainly not
enough for them to attempt to do anything about it, apparently.

During the trial, I think they argued both of the above, amongst other things.
However, I'm fairly sure that's water under the bridge at this point. I would
assume it's just not judged cost effective to work on decade old junk, nor to
give it credence or attention by doing so.

------
twymer
I think this was a negative PR move. Did they really think coming on reddit
and saying things like this would be beneficial? I don't see any evidence in
this that they actually care about peoples feedback.

They just keep getting defensive about their decisions of deleting peoples
email, not supporting IMAP etc.

~~~
joblessjunkie
There's no such thing as bad press.

I've read the name "Hotmail" more times today than I had in the past 6 months.

~~~
siddhant
Yes but all of it is in negative connotation. The replies on the thread are
downright insulting. Take this for example -
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ej32l/we_are_the_hotma...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ej32l/we_are_the_hotmail_development_team_lets_talk/c18gqth)

I think the Hotmail team shouldn't have done this, at least not before putting
all the basic features in place.

~~~
twymer
This persons reply shows another example of them clearly ignoring the users
they are attempting to reach (the people of reddit).

 _you can turn off the page you see before the inbox if you want by going to
options. many people like this because they see highlights of your inbox /
networks in one spot. but understand if you don't -we often default logout to
MSN since that's where many users come from. However this is something that we
always look at._

Guys, if your market it people who go to MSN to find the link to their email
or through Outlook you shouldn't be surprised that the people of reddit don't
like your product.

------
dstein
The condescending attitude Microsoft has for users and developers can also be
seen in their responses to Reddit's Q&A with the IE9 team:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dk3s0/the_ie9_te...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dk3s0/the_ie9_team_responds_to_your_questions/)

~~~
Locke1689
Yeah, when I was at Microsoft we were really out to get the users and the
developers. Are you fucking serious? I expect it at Reddit but not here.

~~~
dstein
I didn't say MS was "out to get the users", I just mean that every response
Microsoft has to perfectly reasonable questions like "why don't you support
[insert standard here]?" has the same patronizing tone like "we've listened to
our customers and delivered a product that they are satisfied with".

~~~
Locke1689
Example? They may be skirting around saying something straight out for legal
reasons (either proprietary or getting sued by a competitor).

~~~
dstein
* Would it have killed you to have included a built-in spellchecker?

For IE9 we really focused on what customers, partners and developers told us
mattered most, their sites. Developers wanted the ability to create richer and
more immersive experiences on the web, and so we invested in fully HW
accelerating HTML5 through Windows.

* Why no Websockets support?

We started by building a tool to look at the top 7000 sites and what web APIs
they used. In IE9, we set out to support the standards that showed up among
those sites. We also spoke to developers and partners to understand what they
were going do in the future and what they couldn't do today

... every answer is like this.

~~~
Locke1689
First, yes, it's in "professional speak." Given that some people from
marketing are overseeing this, I would just expect that. The answers, however,
don't strike me as condescending.

 _For IE9 we really focused on what customers, partners and developers told us
mattered most, their sites. Developers wanted the ability to create richer and
more immersive experiences on the web, and so we invested in fully HW
accelerating HTML5 through Windows._

Dev translation: we actually tested this. People didn't care enough about
built-in spellcheck.

 _We started by building a tool to look at the top 7000 sites and what web
APIs they used. In IE9, we set out to support the standards that showed up
among those sites. We also spoke to developers and partners to understand what
they were going do in the future and what they couldn't do today_

I don't even have anything to add to this. They looked at who's using
websockets and the standard. No one is using it. In fact, I don't see why IE
is getting a bad rap for this -- none of the browsers currently have
websockets enabled while the standard is being fixed. The rest of their
comment is marketing-translated: "We do care about standards though, which is
why we implemented the more common ones."

------
AndrewDucker
What I find sad is that 90% of the replies are just flaming, they aren't
actually trying to explain why they want it. Only a small proportion are
saying that it's because it doesn't support email client X.

------
steverb
The poster is not questioning the need for open standards, they are
questioning the user's need to have that particular standard implemented in
hotmail.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing to do IMO.

~~~
larrik
I agree that the headline is a bit over the top.

When I saw that they mentioned ActiveSync, all I could think of was "I'd have
to plug my phone into my computer to get email???" I didn't know that's what
they call their push service now.

~~~
Locke1689
Yeah the full name is Exchange ActiveSync.

------
sebg
A really interesting comment was the following: "To possibly refine the
thought: both Microsoft and Google want people to spend time on their sites.
Microsoft tries to get people to spend time on their site by giving them
reasons to not leave. Google tries to get people to spend time on their site
by giving them reasons to come back." Not only for the web but also for life,
jobs, health, etc. The google attitude, I would posit, is the right way to
live.

------
spazmaster
I e-mailed Steve Ballmer with this brilliant idea and got a response. Hope
he'll get on it.

<https://skitch.com/danielspronk/rrc2s/inbox-14307-messages>

------
csomar
I was a Hotmail Fan, until (at 2005-2006) one time, I didn't log for 3 months
or so. All my inbox was recycled. I have only 4 Mb of Emails. They are hosting
emails, few conversations and accounts information.

It messed me up, as I lost lot of info; I decided not to use it again, even
though I was happy with the experience (light Email user). I moved to gmail by
begging random users to send me an invite. I was amazed with the storage and
also with the experience and I still use the same inbox to that day.

------
pkamb
Regarding branding: I had a huge "woah" moment a couple months ago when I
realized (via wikipedia) that hotmail = HoTMaiL = HTML.

Not sure how much cash would be involved in that acquisition, but @html.com
would be a cool rebrand that I think tech-minded people would appreciate.

------
ry0ohki
It's pretty sad that Hotmail is trying to reach out to the tech community, and
their comments and getting so far down voted on Reddit (-500 for one comment
at time of writing this)

~~~
potatolicious
I dislike the downvoting too, but there's a reason for it. People are raising
valid critiques about Hotmail (that the Hotmail team specifically asked for!)
and their only response was "well, why would anyone want all of that anyways?"

They're clueless, that's why they're getting downvoted. Re: their complete and
utter cluelessness when it comes to IMAP support, someone basically summarized
up the reasoning in a single sentence, that the Hotmail team hasn't realized
in _years_ of managing this product:

"ActiveSync? srsly? Does it work with my Android phone? With an iPhone? With
anything else than Windows?"

~~~
macmaxbh
Yes, because they're actually talking about Exchange ActiveSync.
[http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/08/30/hotmail-
now-supports-push-email-calendar-and-contacts-with-exchange-activesync.aspx)

EAS is a protocol specifically for mobile phones, and Android, iPhone, Palm
all support it.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Exchange_ActiveSy...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Exchange_ActiveSync_Clients)

------
drlew
on hotmail delivery stops after 270 days account expires after 1 year. this
doesn't mean there isn't room to improve.

its 270 day expiration for gmail, I believe.

not sure for others

------
u48998
I'm not a fan/user of Hotmail but what I don't understand is why people
compare it to Gmail, or why people compare one service to another? If there
are limitations and issues, than discuss on its own merits.

