[karsten samaschke]

GMail is still where it is, offering 1GB for free. Hotmail is offering 250MB for free...

Agreed. Plus a blah@hotmail.com address is SO 1999

;)

If it were only the storage feature that brought about the fascination with GMail then this argument would be justified but 2 GB of storage in the existing Hotmail (or any web based email client for that matter) column and row based format sounds like somewhere that can holds lots and lots of spam and email that you don't want to delete but you will never ever read it again as "the directions to the 2002 family reunion" are no longer relavent anyway.

Is there any mention of any sort of advanced sort and search algorithm or is this it? This couldnt be it.

Actually, to be honest I dont think anyone has really figured it out, including GMail for the exact reason stated above. IMHO the next killer app is a combination of search, sort, and storage coupled with practicality, reality, and applicability. Who cares if I can still find the directions to the 2002 family reunion when this means nothing to anybody in 2004. But take that same email and convert it to an online journal format with your thoughts and reflections while you were at the reunion and maybe this would be something you would want to store and search upon at some later date. In fact its probably something your kids and grandkids would enjoy reading 60 years from now. So add editability to the list above as well as ingenuity that will help create a storage and publication format that will help turn simple things like the "what to bring to the reunion" list thats in that same directions email into an related objects so that when Im trying to remember what brand of bug spray Aunt Martha said worked best at the cabin we all stayed at in 2002 I can retrieve it with a simple query without being reminded about those stupid tshirts she made us all wear that year so we would all be able to tell from a distance which person belonged to which family. And yet that whole list might come in handy again when its time to plan the 2012 family reunion and you decide that those tshirts werent such a bad idea after all.

What could come after that? How about associated linking that tied that list that contained which shirt color belonged to which family with the credit card receipt that then linked the store that Aunt Martha bought the shirts at. Now with a simple query you can call up Tim's Tshirts and ask Tim to pull up purchase #12345 from 2002 and fill it one more time except one gut size larger for all the adult men in the group.

Obviously these are just ideas but more storage isnt going to make anybody's life more productive and easier to manage if the features stay exactly the same as they are today...

Just my two cents.... (actually, these ideas come from another open source project I have under development of which I hope will help influence someone with power and money (Google?, MS? Yahoo!?) to make our lives better with things that matter, not just more places to put the same old crap that has no more meaning or relavance in its current format... but I'd better help finish the Saxon.NET project before I get to far ahead of myself :)

It is not about the 1GB or 2GB..

first of all Gmail is FREE (if it goes on public) right now it is beta (u can get 1 in ebay for around $3)

Gmail u can search old mail, search by word, date,
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/start.html

Who ever think 2GB hotmail is better than Gmail is totally wrong.