HOTMAIL

Hotmail

Windows Live Hotmail inbox
Developed by
Microsoft

Initial release
July 4, 1996 (1996-07-04)
Latest release
Wave 2 (Build 12.1.0068.1031) / August 13, 2007

Hotmail (officially Windows Live Hotmail) is one of the oldest free webmail services, launched in 1996 and acquired in 1997 by Microsoft. It is now part of the Windows Live range of services.
The current version was officially announced on November 1, 2005 as an update to Microsoft's existing MSN Hotmail service. After a period of beta testing, it was officially released to new and existing users in The Netherlands on November 9, 2006 as a pilot market. The world wide release was on May 7, 2007, and roll-out to all existing users was completed in October 2007.
It features 5 GB of storage,
patented security measures,
Ajax technology, and integration with Windows Live Messenger, Spaces, Calendar and Contacts. It has over 280 million users worldwide and is available in 35 different languages.

Contents

Features

Like other major webmail services, Hotmail uses Ajax programming techniques and supports the most popular internet browsers (Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox). Some of its features include keyboard controls giving the ability to navigate around the page without using the mouse, advanced message search including structured query syntax such as "from:ebay", message filters, folder-based organization of messages, auto-completion of contact addresses when composing, contact grouping, importing and exporting of contacts as CSV files, rich text formatting, rich text signatures, spam filtering and virus scanning, support for multiple addresses, and different language versions. POP3 access, although not directly available through Hotmail, can be accessed via Windows Live Mail, and Microsoft Outlook with Outlook Connector.

Users can choose from two different versions of Hotmail. The "Classic" version keeps the interface and layout based on MSN Hotmail, while still benefitting from the speed of Ajax technology. The "Full" version employs a more advanced user interface styled on that of Microsoft Outlook, with a reading pane and drag-and-drop capability. All other features are available in both versions.
Hotmail also includes some capabilities not commonly found in other webmail services:
Audio player

An integrated audio player which plays voicemails or MP3 audio clips after scanning the file for viruses.
Color schemes

Hotmail offers a choice of color schemes. Users can choose from the default Windows Live "Blue Vapor" theme, or blue, red, black, silver, pink, green, purple or orange variants.
Integration

Hotmail integrates with other Windows Live services. Users on Internet Explorer can see if their Windows Live Messenger contacts are online and start instant messaging conversations from Hotmail. Integration with Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Contacts provides the ability to have contact information kept automatically up-to-date, as well as provide notification of updated Spaces. Windows Live Calendar will also be accessible through the Hotmail interface upon completion; MSN Calendar is currently available.
Reading pane

The redesign of Hotmail was centered around an Outlook-style appearance, with a reading pane to view the inbox and messages at the same time, drag-and-drop functionality, keyboard selects for using the Ctrl or Shift keys to select messages and right-click context menus. As with Outlook, the reading pane can be displayed at the side of messages, below them, or not at all.
Security

Security features built into Hotmail include Trend Micro virus scanning, SenderID, SMTP Authentication, phishing heuristic detection, Bonded Sender, mailing list detection, and forwarding detection.
Potentially unsafe mail is caught by Hotmail and it does not open the message or allow access to an attachment until the user requests that it do so; this is intended to reduce the success of phishing attempts. A "safety bar" is positioned above each message as a notification to the user as to whether the sender is known and if the mail content is potentially dangerous.
Spell checker
As with Office programs like Microsoft Word, Hotmail includes the ability to check the spelling of words as they are typed. Misspelled words are underlined in red and a right-click displays a list of suggestions.

Additional information

Registration

Upon registration, new users can choose from a Hotmail domain address (e.g. @hotmail.com, @hotmail.co.uk, @hotmail.it) or a localized Windows Live domain (e.g. @live.com, @live.co.uk, @live.it).

Development history

Evolution of the Hotmail brand

The original Hotmail service was founded by Sabeer Bhatha and Jack Smith , and was one of the first webmail services on the Internet. It was commercially launched on July 4, 1996, American Independence Day, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based e-mail and the ability to access your inbox from anywhere in the world. The name "Hotmail" was chosen out of many possibilities ending in "-mail" as it included the letters HTML - the coding used behind all web pages (to emphasize this, the original spelling was "HoTMaiL").
Hotmail was initially backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. By December 1997, it reported more than 8.5 million subscribers.

It was sold later that month to Microsoft for a reported $400 million, and it joined the MSN group of services. Hotmail quickly gained in popularity as it was localized for different markets around the globe and became the world's largest webmail service, and reported more than 30 million active members by February 1999.

In December 1999, Microsoft neglected to pay their annual $35 'passport.com' domain registration fee to Network Solutions. The oversight made Hotmail, which used the site for authentication, unavailable on Christmas Eve, December 24. A Linux consultant, Michael Chaney, paid it the next day (Christmas), hoping it would solve this issue with the downed site. The payment resulted in the site being available the next morning.

In Autumn 2003, a similar good Samaritan helped Microsoft when they missed payment on the 'hotmail.co.uk' address, although no downtime resulted.

Hotmail originally ran on a mixture of FreeBSD and Solaris operating systems.

Microsoft initially tried to move the FreeBSD portion of the architecture to a Windows NT 4.0 based system, but this failed. Later a project was started to move the system to Windows 2000. In June 2001 Microsoft claimed this had been completed; a few days later they retracted this and admitted that in fact some functions of the Hotmail system were still reliant on FreeBSD.

Later development saw the service tied with Microsoft's web authentication scheme, Passport (now Windows Live ID), and integration with Microsoft's instant messaging and social networking programs, MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces (now Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Spaces, respectively). A security issue appeared in Hotmail during this period that permitted anybody to log into any Hotmail account using the password 'eh'; it was at the time called "the most widespread security incident in the history of the Web."

After a period of technological stagnation, the webmail industry received a significant boost in 2004 when the Google search engine announced its own mail service, Gmail. Featuring vastly increased storage space, speed and interface flexibility, this new competitor spurred a wave of innovation in webmail. The main industry heavyweights – Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail – introduced upgraded versions of their e-mail services with greater speed, security and advanced features.

Microsoft's new e-mail system was announced on November 1st, 2005 under the codename "Kahuna", and a beta version was released to a few thousand testers. Other webmail enthusiasts also wanting to try the beta version could request an invitation granting access. The new service was built from scratch and emphasised three main concepts of being "faster, simpler and safer". New versions of the beta service were rolled out over the development period, and by the end of 2006 the number of beta testers had reached the millions.

The Hotmail brand was planned to be phased-out when Microsoft announced that the new mail system would be called Windows Live Mail, however the developers soon backtracked after beta-testers were confused with the name change and preferred the already well-known Hotmail name, and decided on Windows Live Hotmail. Development of the beta was finished in April 2007, Windows Live Hotmail was released to new registrations in May 2007, and the 260 million MSN Hotmail accounts worldwide now have access to the new system.
The Hotmail development and operations teams are based in Mountain View, California.

MSN Hotmail

The old MSN Hotmail inbox
Hotmail was part of the MSN brand of services before the new version was released with the Windows Live branding. The old MSN Hotmail interface was accessible by only users who signed up for Hotmail accounts before the Windows Live Hotmail release date and had not chosen to update to the new Windows Live Hotmail. Users are now forced to upgrade to the new version.