Hotmail and to a lesser extent Yahoo were perceived as toxic, due to spam mostly. There is still a website I frequent which requests customers email to be 'pref

Hotmail and to a lesser extent Yahoo were perceived as toxic, due to spam mostly. There is still a website I frequent which requests customers email to be 'preferably not a @hotmail.com address'. All the other email providers were either restricted (companies, universities, clubs/guilds etc.), poorly run, or tied you to fees (ISP provided, paid email providers, AOL).