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For the desktop email program also branded under the Windows Live name, see Windows Live Mail.
Windows Live Hotmail
Developer(s)Microsoft
Initial releaseJuly 4, 1996; 28 years ago (1996-07-04)
Stable release
Wave 4 (Build 15.4.0342.1206) / August 3, 2010; 14 years ago (2010-08-03)
PlatformWeb application
Available in36 languages
TypeEmail, Webmail
LicenseProprietary
Website

Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. It was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith and launched in July 1996 as "HoTMaiL"[1]. It was one of the first web-based email services.[2] Its original name and capitalization refers to HTML[1], the encoding language used by the World Wide Web. It was also one of the first free email providers. It was subsequently acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for an estimated $400 million, and shortly after it was rebranded as "MSN Hotmail". The current version, "Windows Live Hotmail", was officially announced in 2005 and released worldwide in 2007.

Windows Live Hotmail features unlimited storage, security measures for which patents have been filed,[3] Ajax technology, and integration with Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail Calendar, SkyDrive and Contacts.[4] According to comScore (August 2010) Windows Live Hotmail is the world's largest web-based email service with nearly 364 million users. Second and third are Yahoo! Mail (280 million) and Gmail (191 million). It is available in 36 different languages.[5][6][7]

The Hotmail development and operations groups are based in Mountain View, California. When Hotmail Corporation was an independent company, its headquarters were in Sunnyvale, California.[8]

Features

Similar to other major webmail services, Hotmail uses Ajax programming techniques and supports later versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome. Some of its features include keyboard controls giving the ability to navigate around the page without using the mouse, the ability to search the user's messages 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. In comparison to other webmail services, Hotmail offers the following unique features:

Active view

Hotmail's Active view allow users to directly interact with contents and functionalities within their email message. For example, any photo attachments can be previewed directly using Active view. In addition, Hotmail provides a partner platform which allows contents and functionalities from various websites and services such as YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, and United States Postal Service to be viewed directly within the email message. For example, users may view the YouTube video within Hotmail when a user receives an email which contains a link to the video. Other functionalities of Active view include tracking of real time shipping status from United States Postal Service and performing social networking actions on LinkedIn directly from within the email message.

Office Web Apps integration

Hotmail integrates with Office Web Apps to allow high fidelity viewing and editing of Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents that are attached to the email messages. Users can directly open attached Office documents within the web browser, and save them into their Windows Live SkyDrive. Users can also perform edits to any received Office documents, and directly reply to the sender with the edited version of the document. In addition, users may also send up to 10GB of Office documents (up to 50 MB each) using Hotmail by uploading these documents onto Windows Live SkyDrive, and share these documents with other users for viewing or collaboration.

Conversation threading

Hotmail provides the ability to automatically group sent and received emails that are from the same conversation into the same conversation thread, allowing users to quicking browse through all the emails within the same conversation thread. This feature can be turned on or off depending on the user's preferences.

Sweep

Hotmail offers a "virtual broom" which allow users to delete or move large amounts emails into specified folders based on the sender's information. Once a "sweep" is performed, the user may choose to configure Hotmail to remember the sweep settings and perform the same move or delete actions for any future emails. Users may also set up custom message rules based on the sender's or recipient's information, the subject of the email, or attachments to the email.

Quick views and one-click filters

Quick views allow users to filter all emails (in all folders) by document attachments, photo attachments, flagged messages, or shipping updates. One-click filters allow users to filter the inbox (or specific folder) based on whether or not the email message is unread, from the Windows Live Contacts list, from group mailing lists or Windows Live Groups, or from a social networking website.

Registration

Upon registration, new users can choose from a Hotmail domain address. (e.g. @hotmail.com and @live.com)

History

Launch of Hotmail

Hotmail service was founded by Sabeer Bhatia 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 email[9] and the ability to access a user's 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 markup language used to create web pages (to emphasize this, the original type casing was "HoTMaiL"). The limit for free storage was 2 MB.[1] Hotmail was initially backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. By December 1997, it reported more than 8.5 million subscribers.[10] Hotmail initially ran under Solaris for mail services and Apache on FreeBSD for web services before being converted to Microsoft products.[11][12]

MSN Hotmail

Image of an old Hotmail inbox layout embedded in Outlook

Hotmail was sold to Microsoft in December 1997 for a reported $400 million, and it joined the MSN group of services.[13] 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.[14] Hotmail originally ran on a mixture of FreeBSD and Solaris operating systems.[15] A project was started to move Hotmail to Windows 2000. In June 2001, Microsoft claimed this had been completed; a few days later they retracted and admitted that the DNS functions of the Hotmail system were still reliant on FreeBSD.[16] Later development saw the service tied with Microsoft's web authentication scheme, Microsoft 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."[17]

The old MSN Hotmail inbox

In 2001, the Hotmail service was compromised again by computer hackers who discovered that anyone could log into their Hotmail account and then cull messages from any other Hotmail account by crafting a URL with the second account's username and a valid message number. It was such a simple attack that by the time the patch was made, dozens of newspapers and hundreds of web sites published exact descriptions allowing tens-of-thousands of hackers to run rampant across Hotmail. The exploitable vulnerability exposed millions of accounts to tampering between August 7, 2001 and August 31, 2001.[18][19] After a period of technological stagnation, the webmail industry received a significant boost in 2004 when Google announced its own mail service, Gmail. Featuring greater 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 email services with greater speed, security, and advanced features.

Windows Live Hotmail

Microsoft's new email system was announced on November 1, 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 emphasized 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.[20]

The Hotmail brand was planned to be phased-out when Microsoft announced that the new mail system would be called Windows Live Mail, but 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. 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. Development of the beta was finished in April 2007, Windows Live Hotmail was released to new registrations on May 7, 2007, as the 260 million MSN Hotmail accounts worldwide gained access to the new system. The old MSN Hotmail interface was accessible only by users who registered before the Windows Live Hotmail release date and had not chosen to update to the new service. The roll-out to all existing users was completed in October 2007.

Windows Live Hotmail was awarded PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award in February 2007[21] and again in March 2007 with a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.[22]

It was announced in 2008 on the Windows Live Hotmail website[23] that the service would be updated with focus on improving the speed, increasing the storage space, better user experience, and usability features. It was announced that sign-in and email access speeds will be up to 70 percent faster. The classic and full versions of Windows Live Hotmail are combined in the new release. As a result of user feedback, Hotmail has been updated so that scrolling works for users who have the reading pane turned off. It is also expected that Hotmail team will be moving the advertisement from the top of page to the side, adding more themes, increasing the number of messages on each page, and adding the ability to send instant messages from the user's inbox in future releases.[24]

Support for Mozilla Firefox in the upgraded Windows Live Hotmail took a few months to complete.[25] Full version support for Google Chrome was also added on November 4, 2008. On October 30, 2008, some account holders using various Linux based browsers started experiencing read-only access.[26] However, with the use of a user agent switcher to dupe Hotmail into thinking the user is accessing from Windows, normal functionality is restored, which indicates that Windows Live Hotmail is only allowing certain browsers at the moment.

As part of the update, Microsoft also added integrated capability for instant messaging with contacts on the Windows Live Messenger service. The feature is the realization of a project that began as "Windows Live Web Messenger" in 2007, a replacement for the outdated "MSN Web Messenger" service that was first launched in August 2004. It was noted that the original "Windows Live Web Messenger" featured tabbed conversations in a "conversation workspace", however since its integration with Hotmail this has been removed.[27][28]

On May 18, 2010, Microsoft unveiled the "Wave 4" update of Hotmail, which offers features such as 1-Click Filters, Active Views, Inbox Sweeping, and 10GB of photos and Microsoft Office documents attachments.[29] It also includes integration with Windows Live SkyDrive and Windows Live Office, a free version of Microsoft's Office Web Apps suite. The new version began its gradual release to all Hotmail users on June 15, 2010[30] and was completely rolled out on August 3, 2010.[31] Exchange ActiveSync support was enabled to all Hotmail users on August 30, 2010, allowing users to sync their mail, contacts, calendar and tasks to their mobile devices that supports the protocol. [32] Addition of full-session SSL was released on November 9, 2010 but it does not support Windows Live Family Safety managed accounts.

Desktop mail client access

POP3

POP3 access is available for all Hotmail accounts as part of the "Wave 3" release, adding support to access Hotmail from any email client – most notably mobile devices.[33]

WebDAV

Hotmail was often criticized for allowing only paying subscribers to access it through the WebDAV protocol, which allows emails to be downloaded locally via a desktop email client such as Microsoft Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird (with the WebMail extension). WebDAV access was originally available to all Hotmail users, but the service was revoked from new free users in 2004. If a Hotmail account was older than 2004, it was still possible for users to freely access their Hotmail account outside of an internet browser with the above-mentioned programs using WebDAV. If users had a newer account, WebDAV access was only available in Hotmail Premium. On June 4, 2009 Microsoft informed that WebDAV would be discontinued on September 1, 2009.[34][35]

DeltaSync

For access through Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010, users can download the free Microsoft Office Outlook Connector. Using the Outlook connector, users can freely access email messages, contacts, and calendars in any Hotmail account, though access to tasks and notes requires a premium subscription. Another alternative for users is to use the Windows Live Mail desktop client which has built-in support for Hotmail.[36] Both applications, Windows Live Mail and Microsoft Outlook, can access Hotmail through the proprietary DeltaSync protocol. Currently no Mac alternative utilizing DeltaSync exists, as Microsoft Entourage does not support it. There has been no word from Microsoft Entourage or Windows Live Hotmail as to whether an "Entourage Connector" will be available in the future.

Exchange ActiveSync

As part of Hotmail "Wave 4" release, Microsoft has added Exchange ActiveSync support to Hotmail, allowing users to synchronise their email, contacts, and calendar on any device that supports the Exchange ActiveSync protocol.[37]

Spam policy and filtering

Hotmail is often used by spammers for illicit purposes such as junk or chain mailing and unwanted marketing, due to its wide availability, its popularity, and its ease of registration of new accounts. However, Microsoft does not tolerate this practice,[38][39] and accounts engaging in these activities are terminated without warning[substantiate].

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c "A short history of Hotmail". Windowsteamblog.com. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
  2. ^ "The "Hotmail" Evolution". Techpluto.com. June 22, 2009. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
  3. ^ Imran Qureshi. "Why Kahuna is different (part 2)". Microsoft. Retrieved March 30, 2007.
  4. ^ Windows Live Hotmail Fact Sheet
  5. ^ "Windows Live Hotmail Launches Worldwide in 36 Languages". Itnewsonline.com. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
  6. ^ Hotmail staff. "Bing Comes To Hotmail". Microsoft. Retrieved March 23, 2007.
  7. ^ Hotmail staff. "Microsoft Hotmail upgrade targets Gmail and Yahoo". BBC News. Retrieved March 23, 2010.
  8. ^ "4th Network Hotels Get Wired with Hotmail E-mail Service and High Speed Internet Access; Hotmail and 4th Network Ink Agreement to Keep Business Travelers Connected." Business Wire. October 21, 1996. Retrieved on January 22, 2010.
  9. ^ "Sabeer Bhatiya : The founder of "Hotmail.com"". 4TO40.COM. Retrieved November 19, 2009.[dead link]
  10. ^ "Hotmail, Microsoft talk deals". CNET. Retrieved March 23, 2007.
  11. ^ http://www.lege.com/unix-nt/hotmail.html
  12. ^ Mike Magee. "Microsoft uses Solaris servers for Hotmail shock".
  13. ^ "Microsoft Buys Hotmail". CNET. Retrieved June 22, 2007.
  14. ^ "MSN Hotmail: From Zero to 30 Million Members in 30 Months". Microsoft. Retrieved March 23, 2007.
  15. ^ "Converting a UNIX.COM site to Windows". Microsoft Secrets. Security Office. Retrieved November 3, 2007.
  16. ^ Gomes, Lee (June 18, 2001). "Is Microsoft Secretly Using Open Source?" (reprint). Microsoft - BSD. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 3, 2007.
  17. ^ Glave, James. "Hotmail Hackers: 'We Did It'". Wired.com. Retrieved November 3, 2007.
  18. ^ Greene, Thomas (August 20, 2001). "Hacking Hotmail made easy". The Register. Retrieved September 17, 2008.
  19. ^ Knight, Will (August 21, 2001). "Hotmail hole leaves email open to view". New Scientist. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
  20. ^ Hotmail staff. "M7 new code shipping soon - not yet here!". Microsoft. Retrieved March 21, 2007.
  21. ^ "Buying Guide: Web E-Mail Clients". PC Magazine. Retrieved March 21, 2007.
  22. ^ "Windows Live Hotmail (beta) Review by PC Magazine". PC Magazine. Retrieved April 10, 2007.
  23. ^ "Coming Soon". Windows Live Hotmail. Retrieved July 24, 2010.
  24. ^ "Hotmail: Classic scrolling is back, and more updates". Windowslivewire.spaces.live.com. Retrieved July 24, 2010.
  25. ^ "Hotmail Reverted To Classic With Firefox 3 - Page 6". Forums.mozillazine.org. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
  26. ^ "Firefox Support Forum". Mozilla. October 30, 2008. Retrieved November 6, 2008.
  27. ^ "Web IM in Hotmail!". Windowslivewire.spaces.live.com. Retrieved July 24, 2010.
  28. ^ LiveSide.net (September 19, 2007). "Windows Live Web Messenger goes into dogfood". LiveSide.net. Retrieved July 24, 2010.
  29. ^ Dick Craddock (May 17, 2010). "Re-inventing Windows Live Hotmail – the next generation of personal email". Inside Windows Live. Retrieved May 18, 2010.
  30. ^ Mike Schackwitz (July 28, 2010). "Hotmail rollout picks up steam!". Inside Windows Live. Retrieved July 29, 2010.
  31. ^ Mike Schackwitz (03 August 2010). "The new Hotmail is now available to everyone". Inside Windows Live. Retrieved 08 August 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  32. ^ Dick Craddock (August 30, 2010). "Hotmail now supports push email, calendar, and contacts with Exchange ActiveSync". Inside Windows Live. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
  33. ^ "POP3 Technology Has Now Rolled Out To Hotmail Customers Worldwide". Liveside.net. March 13, 2009. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
  34. ^ "Continuing DAV protocol retirement". Mailcall.spaces.live.com. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
  35. ^ "Microsoft to kill Hotmail via Outlook Express on September 1". Neowin.net. June 4, 2009. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
  36. ^ "Windows Live Hotmail". Get.live.com. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
  37. ^ "Windows Live Hotmail Reviewer's Guide: What's new in Hotmail". Windowslivepreview.com. Retrieved July 24, 2010.[dead link]
  38. ^ "Microsoft Service Agreement". Microsoft. 2009. Retrieved August 5, 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  39. ^ Microsoft (2009). "Microsoft Anti-Spam Policy". Retrieved August 5, 2009. Microsoft may immediately terminate any account on any Service which it determines, in its sole discretion, is transmitting or is otherwise connected with any email that violates this policy
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