Ok. This is the case of a constant being a variable now :-). So far, most free email services offered an email id with a unique domain name (e.g. hotmail.com, yahoo.com, gmail.com or their country specific TLDs, but the same brand name). Now, for the last couple of weeks, I have been listening a lot about coolhotmail.com on radio, so took a look at it.
The coolhotmail.com service is offered as part of the live.com initiative from Microsoft and looks like it is primarily targeted for India netizens. There are a handful of domain names based on themes like the places, interests, sports, personality, etc. People can pick and choose an id they want. That way, people get relatively unique and simple usernames as their mail ids (because of a vast number of domain names to choose from) than words/names appended with long numbers. Good idea to start with.
This is an interesting paradigm shift. So far, the domain name for the email id also worked as a branding opportunity. Now, the mail id is no longer a part of the branding, but the mail content (or advertisements with in the email) may be the primary source of branding and advertising revenues. Or may be the web front end that is used to read the email. But not the domain name. So the constant (the domain name) is a variable now.
I just registered an id with one of the domains and logged in. Except for the domain name, the rest of the service is hotmail. The login also is from the hotmail/live.com page.
There is a specific disclaimer that got my attention. The live.com service provider, at least per that page, is different from service providers of individual domains and the service may be discontinued at any time. Now this gets interesting. May be this is a beta service targeting a particular geographic location and if it successful, it may be extended further. If there are not many takers, then these services may eventually go. I am just thinking loud here.
Interesting idea. Let us see if similar ideas will creep into the offerings by other free mail service providers.