Quick, Microsoft is offering Hotmail Plus for $19.95 per year. The offer expires Feb. 28th 2006. What happens then? Well, they don’t say. Is it a good deal? Beats me, they also don’t say what the price was previously or what it will be afterward.

There are no links on the page to the actual service so I’ll just do a search. That’s a little inconvenient for me, the potential customer, but maybe it’s a great deal. It must be a really good deal if Microsoft is making me work for it.

OK, a Google search for “Hotmail Plus” does not turn up relevant results for the service itself near the top. But there is a paid listing at the right for Hotmail Plus. If I click that link I get taken to the main (free) Hotmail sign up page. Nothing about the premium service, the Hotmail Plus service that I am looking for. I’ll just dig in and check it out a little bit by clicking on the red button with an arrow that says “Get if free.” Oh, wait, that’s just a graphic that looks exactly like a button one would click to move forward in the sign-up or information gathering process. It’s a big red button with a right facing arrow. Fortunately for me, that patient user, there is an identical button below that actually is a link to move forward. Of course.

Now I am fully into the signup process for a regular Hotmail account. That’s funny, I clicked on a sponsored link that said “Hotmail Plus” that appeared when I searched for Hotmail Plus. But I am taking right into the sign up process for a different service. There’s no obvious mention of the premium service I was looking for.

So Microsoft is paying for my attention by buying a search term for a premium product. Then they are using that purchased attention to lead me to something I didn’t want, that’s free when I was willing to pay, and using a broken user interface.

Disaster.