<p>I met you first at a Kinko's in 1996. All those copies seems a bit wasteful now. We'd gather 'round in our blue aprons to watch those crazy-expensive color prints come spitting out, then we'd check our Hotmail. I know your buddy Kinko's would have some stories to tell. I still can't believe Microsoft finally pulled your plug today.</p><p>Even though I had a perfectly fine Telnet account, the copy boss made us all sign up for Hotmail. You were the first free webmail service I had ever used, that any of us had used. You were a revelation: internet savvy, promiscuous when it came to hardware, and free. Most of all you were free.</p><p>After some time with you, I remember asking, why do they call it "spam?" A little more time, and I understood. Still, there had to be something more important lurking inside of you than guaranteed penile enlargements and Nigerian Princes with money to send me. Why else would Microsoft have paid the then ungodly sum of $400 million for you?</p><p>None of us would be standing here today at our standing desks, dripping in gratis services from Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and yes, your corporate parent Microsoft, were it not for you. All those sweaty Internet cafes on that trip through Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia would have been useless without you. Sure I had my password stolen along with my passport in Jakarta, but those were good times, and back then, who cared? You were up to something bigger.</p><p><a href="http://www.wired.com/business/2013/05/hotmail-rip-thanks-for-all-the-spam/">Keep reading...</a></p>