Jason Calacanis tends to show Google so much love that his knees must really hurt. However, he has
sort of an interesting post about Gmail, and how he has filled up his account of 2.8 gb. Nice work Jason, you must be popular 
You can read the all the comments yourself, but interesting thing for me to learn was that Gmail does not offer a premium account with extra storage and no ads. I am personally addicted to my Hotmail Plus account (soon to be Live Hotmail Plus 
) because it works as a datacenter for me. I collect all my email, except work email, through Windows Live Mail Desktop, and upload it to my premium account. This means that I have all important emails in one place, which I can access easily from any computer connected to the Internet. Me likes.
For me the once periphiral hotmail service has become my number one email account because of a couple of things:
- I have had since before Microsoft bought Hotmail
- It works with Live Messenger
- I can access it easily from anywhere
- If I use Live Mail Desktop i get all the functionality of client-type software
- Since I have the premium subscription, I never see any ads in my applications, including Live Spaces making it seem more like “my” account, rather than some ad sponsored second rate crap.
This is a huge step away from the 2mb webmail services that we had accesss to only a few years ago, and Ithink we have Google to thank for that. The Gmail service pushed the boundaries for conventional thinking within this particular category, and now we see companies like Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft delivering even better services. Competition, in this case, has really benefitted the end-user in my humble opinion.
As we see more and more service type apps on the Internet, I am curious to see how the operating 
system will evovlve. At least for the time being the OS is still the foundation, but how will the world look in 5-10 years time? In the respect I belive Microsoft is much better equipped to handle that transition compared to Apple, who is still focused on the Mac as a platform. On the other hand, Apple will not be making computers by then because they will have made the transition into a fully fledged consumer electronics company like Sony. The dominace of iTunes and the iPod will ensure that Apple will still be making tons of money in the future. Unless of course they have to go to court over their monopoly…… that would be funny as hell 
Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, Hotmail, Google, Apple, iTunes, Microsoft, Gigaboot, Webmail, Saas, Gmail, Yahoo