On: Ask HN: Did you ever do anything unethical to get ...

[wmf]

And let us not forget the more innocent days of 1996, when putting ads on free email was considered borderline shady: http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/18/ps-i-love-you-get-your-free...

[sprout → wmf]

It may not be so much innocence as different cost considerations.

In 1996 bandwidth was at far more of a premium than it is now, so even the modest demands of Google AdSense would have had a much greater cost to the user.

And certainly Hotmail remains slow, though not so much for lack of bandwidth anymore.