racist hotmail

It sure smacks of racism when Hotmail, the world's leading free email provider, follows up on upgrades by its rivals - 250MB storage (for all members) by yahoo and 1 Gig from google (gmail) - with a pathetic 25MB a/c for new users outside of the United States and Canada, and a statement to the effect- "250MB inbox available only in the 50 United States, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Eligible Hotmail users will first receive 25MB at sign-up".

Why then isn't hotmail's service available to only the US, Canada et al. why make the service available to individuals all over the world - black, chinese, indians, arabic - but give us a stripped down version of what is offered only in the US.

Is it any surprise that the people affected mostly by this decision are poorer class, and of a darker hue than say, ummmmmm.... Bill Gates maybe.

And no, this isn't some quack posting accusing Bill Gates of being the anti-christ (that title belongs to George Bush, oooops! did I get some ppl mad...aaaaaaaawwwwwww). This is just a factual statement - upon the initial launch of google's gmail, hotmail promised its users (not Americans only, or Canadians only, but all users) 250MB of email space. Yahoo has upped the ante with its own 250MB of space (thanks in no small part to hotmail's promises) and google still reigns, but what did hotmail do???? They decided that only North Americans need to use their email service, the rest of us are just lucky they're doing us a favour!

And, BTW, the service isn't really free (for all the dumb zealots out there, let me just pre-empt you). They advertise to us, and their advertising commands top dollar. And they sell our personal information to marketers and market researchers.