Quote:
Originally Posted by marty1968
… I started using web based emails due to the PITA of switching ISP emails when I changed ISPs  |
Many of us started using webmail back then to avoid the need to keep changing email addresses: I started using webmail because I kept moving between various academic institutions every year or two and my email address kept changing.
I still have my email addresses from Hotmail and from Yahoo that I got in 1999 or 1998, though I don't use them for anything useful nowadays. I had lots of other addresses in various free (and one paid) service that have all gone. I have my Gmail address from 2004 but I almost never used it for email correspondence. I'm sort of stuck with it as my Google account username, because Google doesn't (or didn't) allow changing a gmail address to an external address in a Google account. I never used my ISP email address for anything but receiving email from the ISP, but I still have it after more than 20 years (haven't changed ISP over all these years). For almost 20 years I'm using my own domain for email, and probably I would be able to keep doing it for many more years.
I guess that the most stable email address would be in one's own domain (provided one doesn't fail to renew registration). Almost as stable are email addresses in Gmail or Hotmail (including outlook.com). Yahoo has been there for almost 25 years, but I wouldn't be surprised if one day they'll close their email service, Just like Excite and many other services that have been available for two decades or more. They are private businesses and don't get much from the free email service they offer.