One of the things which people rarely get about free email is why free e-mail providers would bother offering free e-mail at all. After all, what do the free e-mail providers get out of it?

Well, for starters, they get millions of eyeballs looking intently at a screen which they control.

Witness, for example, the context-targeted ads which are served up every time you look at your e-mail in Gmail. Not only that, but they have advertisers paying them to be in front of your eyeballs.

But if you still doubt that free email services are important to the free e-mail providers - probably far more so than they are important to you - consider the plaque recently presented by management to the Yahoo! Mail team. The plaque, while certainly tongue-in-cheek, aptly demonstrates the fact that above all, free e-mail is a commercial, competitive product, just like any other:

“Presented to the Yahoo! Mail Team by the good people of Yahoo! in recognition of tremendous intellectual effort put forth in order to defeat Gmail…

[Continue reading Free E-mail Worth a Lot to Yahoo! and Gmail]

[tags]email,free e-mail,free e-mail providers[/tags]