In the late 90s, Hotmail was the most popular online email service available. Though Yahoo email and Gmail later arrived to give the service significant competition, Hotmail remained widely used for over 16 years. Now, Hotmail has become another relic of the early internet.
Microsoft this week announced that Hotmail is officially gone. The service has been rolled into Microsoft’s new Outlook.com service.
Outlook.com Group Program Manager Dick Craddock announced the death of Hotmail on Thursday, over on the Outlook Blog. From the blog post:
We want to give a huge “Thank you” to all of you who have supported Hotmail over the years, for some of you, that’s going back as far as 1996. It has been an amazing journey and we’ve been honored to provide you with a great mail experience for many years. When we launched the original preview of Outlook.com, we knew that we were committing to building the world’s best email with a brand and product experience that spans from consumers all the way to the largest organizations. We’re excited to have you join Outlook.com as we write the next chapter in modern email from Microsoft.
With the added users from Hotmail, Outlook.com can now boast more than 400 million active accounts. Craddock stated that the Outlook team was able to migrate 150 petabytes of email in just 6 weeks while maintaining Hotmail users’ preferences and contacts.
Hotmail users will still be able to use their @hotmail.com email address, but will access their inbox from the Outlook website. Microsoft is now using a single ‘Microsoft Account’ for all of its services, including SkyDrive, which is tightly integrated into Outlook.