It's hard to imagine that there are some places unreachable for progress in the age of Hi-Tech. Moreover, the more this progress can reduce possible profit, the longer time they are restraining it by all available means.
As you know, the most of free e-mail services exist because of advertising earnings that is shown to the Users in the web-interface of mailbox. So, web industry giants don't hasten to provide free access to the mailboxes via POP3 and SMTP protocols, as the efficiency of their ad places will considerably decrease which is unwanted situation.Such giants as MSN.com, AOL.com, Yahoo.com have a lot of users, who attached to the other companies services. They do not hurry to introduce such access because users have no another choice, they just get into to use the web-interface.
Of cause there are some ways to avoid these limitations. For example, there are programs of third-party writers for Yahoo.com who convert the web-traffic into POP3. However the possibility of mailboxes passwords theft by means of such software that decreases the will to use them still exists. For Hotmail.com by MSN.com there is a possibility to use a special protocol, which is integrated into Outlook Express, and is not available to other email program developers, which also limits the user's freedom to choose an email program. The AOL.com has access by POP3 and SMTP, but it is accessible for the clients for internet access from that provider and this cramp the region of mail using because the internet access from the AOL.com is not everywhere.
However, they lose a lot, trying to follow the outdated marketing policy that is intended for online advertising, and limiting the user's freedom in his choice. There is another way to monetize guests by attracting and keeping users. A company Google.com with its email Gmail.com has become this new model. At the beginning the users can access the interfaces POP3 and SMTP, that does not limit the users in the way of mail using. However this service has a great advantage over common mailing applications like Outlook Express - it is a big volume of mailbox disk space allowing user to keep all the e-mails straight at the server and get access to its' mailbox from any part of the world.Moreover, only relevant ad is showed to the user, no obtrusive banners! Such service format increasingly wins the sympathy of e-mail users as handy interface enables you to forget mail applications installation and setup problems.
As a result the email systems we will know in the future will be web interfaces, without actually using any email programs. Yahoo.com, MSN.com and AOL.com webmail most probably will also use this model later as it much profitable than out of date method of mail application utilization.The protocols POP3 and SMTP are also outdated themselves. For example Gmail.com gives you the opportunity to receive notifications about new emails through a special RSS feed.