轻松英语阅读：电子邮件

Before there was Gmail or even Yahoo mail, there was Hotmail, a free web-based E-mail service that was the first of its kind. Because when Microsoft released Hotmail in 1996, most people could only have one E-mail account, with only limited storage, making it very difficult for them to send pictures or even small documents over the Internet. But from 1997, anyone could get an E-mail account, anyone could send large files to their friends, and the Internet as we know it started taking shape.

But being first does not always mean being best, or even being the most successful. And just as Facebook soon surpassed MySpace (which was the first popular Internet social site), Gmail took the top E-mail spot from Hotmail, and the number of Hotmail users declined. Finally, Microsoft shut the doors of Hotmail on May 1st, and new Microsoft E-mail users will now get an outlook.com address instead. In some ways, this is an end of an era, but this being the Internet, “out with the old, in with the new” is the name of the game.