Remember when Hotmail was hot?

Neither do I. But it occurs that it might have been to somebody at one point. Personally, I thought Hotmail was dead when J decided to go with Gmail a few years back. I think she still uses Hotmail for a return address for forwards off the various news sites. She doesn't use Excite for the purpose anymore, anyways.

Remember Freelane? J used it. Then it was gone. I used Simpson's 1stup.com free dial up before it went. Remember when Netzero was free as well? Never used Flooz, but I remember the commercials.

I should have reminiscenced about these things from the Dot.com/Tech Bubble daze when I was in the mood but they didn't come to mind as being that old to be drudged up from my impaired college memories. I guess that a lot of Facebook stock owners don't remember anything that happened 10 years ago, either.

History repeats itself, and Facebook is the punchline. Facebook is free just like Freelane and Netzero, which were fine to use considering dial-up was standard for surfer. DSL didn't kill them off with their speeds, because people like free stuff out of principle.

Didn't AOL used to charge by the minute for dial-up as part of its billing? I remember Compuserve charging subscribers even if they didn't use the service during the month if they didn't cancel. Cell providers used the same business model.

Long walk back to the present- I read that Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon seek domains from ICANN, and I which jogged these thoughts about the world before the clutternet, when internet was capitalized and free from citizen journalist wannabes trolling for a fight.