It is difficult to imagine, that in our time of high technologies there exist places, where progress didn't come. Besides the more coming progress theoretically can reduce the possible income, the more that progress is restrained by means of all existing ways.
Most free e-mail services are known to get profit from ads showed to users in mailbox web-interface. So, web industry giants don't hasten to provide free access to the mailboxes via POP3 and SMTP protocols, as the efficiency of their ad places will considerably decrease which is unwanted situation.Such giants as Yahoo.com, MSN.com, and AOL.com have many users who are attached to other services of the companies and they are being slow to provide users with such access, just because people got used to use the web interface.
Of cause there are some ways to avoid these limitations. For example, there are programs of third-party writers for Yahoo.com who convert the web-traffic into POP3. However the possibility of mailboxes passwords theft by means of such software that decreases the will to use them still exists. Hotmail.com has the ability provided by Hotmail.com to use special protocol integrated into Outlook Express and been unavailable to other e-mail software developers, and that is certainly also constrains the freedom of user when choosing e-mail software. AOL.com provides access via POP3 and SMTP, but only to the clients that are connected to this ISP, this is also bounds the e-mail usage area as AOL.com provides its ISP services only in certain areas.
But, they lose a lot trying to hold the old marketing policy oriented for on-line publicity limiting the users choice. There is another way to monetize population attracting and holding users. A company Google.com with its email Gmail.com has become this new model. At the beginning the users can access the interfaces POP3 and SMTP, that does not limit the users in the way of mail using. But the service has a big advantage before ordinary mail clients like Outlook Express - that is big post mailbox and all the letters can be stored at the server without problems that allows the user to have access for the mailbox from the any part of the world.Plus, only relevant advertising is shown to a user, no bothering banners! This format is becoming more and more likable for email users because a convenient web interface allows you to forget about installing and setting problems of email programs.
As a result the email systems we will know in the future will be web interfaces, without actually using any email programs. Yahoo.com, MSN.com and AOL.com most probably will also use this model later as it much profitable than out of date method of mail application utilization.Even POP3 and SMTP have served their time because the Gmail.com notice about new mail you can get by means of RSS channels.