Rising Costs of Free Web E-Mail: "Free Web-based e-mail services can be slow, clunky, sometimes unreliable and often glutted with messages from persistent Nigerian government ministers urgently seeking your aid. But you get what you pay for, and for all their imperfections, free services have become hugely popular for the obvious reason that they cost nothing. That main reason for sticking with the free mailers is quickly vanishing, though, as Yahoo and Hotmail, the two largest free e-mail services, have started to not-so-gently nudge users to pay for "premium" features."