Why your product should not annoy people

Hey Bill Gates, listen up I got a problem with your products.  Ok I know you are semi-retired or something like that, but you are still the face of Microsoft and I am pretty sure that you could place one phone call and make something happen over there.  My problem is I have a Hotmail account, actually it is the fact that my wife has a hotmail account that is the real problem, because I stopped using my hotmail account years ago.  My account is still active, but the emails just get forwarded to my Gmail account, because well Gmail works better.

Not my wife though, she still goes to the hotmail page and logs on to read her email every day.  Occasionally she gets an email with an attachment or some information that she needs me to look at.  I know that she could just forward the email to me, but you see that is not how things work at my house.  I have to open Internet Explorer, go to the hotmail page and log on to her account.

Here is where the problem starts.  When I do log on to hotmail on my computer, Microsoft Messenger pops up and wants me to log on to it also.  I am sure someone in marketing at Microsoft wants to insure that I get the "full experience".  I only rarely use hotmail and I NEVER use MS Messenger.  Sure I tried it out like a decade ago when it first came out.  I used it for about an hour, but when the 23rd porn bot tried to chat me up in that time period, I turned it off and have not used it since.

Now I am no Unix toting, Microsoft is the evil empire kind of guy.  I actually think you guys have come out with some pretty good products over the years.  I also think you deserve to make a buck off what you came up with and I think the French just sued you over Internet Explorer because they were jealous.  I mean what have they been successful at lately, besides cooking with butter.

But come on, you do realize not everyone loves you and so why do you want to add an annoying feature to your products?  Not only does your website launch MS Messenger, but it puts into my list of startup programs, so it's not enough to just close the program.  The next time I start up my computer I have to close it again.  I am not a total idiot either, I know how to open msconfig and take it out of my start up list, but my question is why should I have to?

I know there is probably a way to disable this also, so the next time I open hotmail it won't happen.  Maybe it is a Internet Explorer thing or a Win7 thing, I don't know.  Like I said, it is an annoyance and has never risen to the level of me spending time figuring out how to turn this off and that is the point of my post.

There are three things that can happen with features in any product.

1.  The features are great and you love that they are added to the experience and it makes you like the company better.

2.  The features are not something you want, but if they are bad enough you may actually take the time to figure out how to disable the feature and in the process you may decide you like the company more because they gave you some options.

3.  The features are annoying, but don't rise to the level of the user ever dealing with them, so all they do is remind the user that maybe he really does not like your company very much.

If you have any doubt Bill, your MS Messenger feature in hotmail fits firmly in category 3 for me.  You want to borrow my phone?