Hotmail : a brief History

Commercially launched on 4 July,1996,it’s the day of America Independence which just symbolizes freedom from Internet service provider and user can check his mail from anywhere in the world he is, Window Live Mail formerly known as MSN Hotmail but it’s commonly famous among net user Hotmail , its available in two version free and paid ,service provider is Microsoft. It was founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith . It was one of the free webmail service, In the year 1997 it was taken over by Microsoft for $400 and rename as ‘MSN Hotmail’ and on 1st November2005 it officially announced as Window Live Hotmail and after test in beta form it officially released in Netherlands on 9th November,2006 as pilot market for existing and new user. The world wide release was on 7 May,2007 and roll out release was completed to all existing user was on October,2007.
Window Live Hotmail features 5 GB of free storage, patent security measures,Ajax technology,and it is integrated with Window live messenger,Spaces,Calendar n contacts,it has 260 million user worldwide and available in worlds 35 different languages.
Just like other webmail services Hotmail use Ajax programming techniques n support popular browsers Interne Explorer & Mozilla Firefox and to name its features keyboard controls so that user has not to use all the time mouse to navigate,search,rich text formatting,spam filtering,virus scanning,support for multiple addresses,and worlds different language versions.User can opt from two different versions of Hotmail Classic version which has interface and layout based on Hotmail,when user use full version it get some advance features like reading pane a more advance interface style like of Microsoft Outlook. Hotmail also add some capability which not found other webmail service provider.
User make folders and store email,photos and other info,even can send direct mail to specific folders with some settings,message store and kept in Draft folder never delted it has to be deleted by user but junk folder messages deleted after specific period at aits own.Lot of Window live services are integrated with mail from where one can use other services from single click like Messanger,Window Live Spaces,Contact,Calendar,
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 features built into Hotmail include Trend Micro virus scanning, Sender ID, 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.
Like Office application of Microsoft Word Hotmail has a unique feature of spell checking whenever some body write if its misspelled it immediately highlight with red line and with right click option it display option,but recently it remove in Window live Latest version.
Hotmail user get a lot of choices to choose from predefine themes and when ever any body opt theme it effective all the related services of Window Live.

Upon registration, new users can choose from a Hotmail domain address (e.g. @hotmail.com, @hotmail.co.uk, @hotmail.fr) or a localized Windows Live domain (e.g. @live.com, @live.ca, @live.co.uk, @live.fr, @live.com.au, @live.nl).
The domain Live.com attracted at least 922 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study. Hotmail in the beginning backed by Venture Capital firm by name Draper Fisher Jurvetson and up to Dec, 1997 it had 8.5 million user, and on above coded date it was sold to Microsoft $400 million, and become one of the service of MSN Group and when it become localize for different market of world become one of largest webmail service, and when calendar touch the month of Feb. of 1999 it had 30 million active user.
In December,1999 Microsoft ignore to pay their annual registration fee to Network Solutions which was $35’passport.com” and this negligence made Hotmail used for authentication detach on Christmas Eve, December 24.Mr.Michale Chaney a Linux Consultant paid the next in just hope that it will solve the problem, and money given make the downed site being available, very next morning,and later on same type of problem reoccurred when Microsoft missed with there hotmail.co.uk address, but they were lucky that time that there was no downtime, this time it was helped by Good Samaritan.
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."
Then there was stagnation of technology only until the year came of 2004 and month was April when Google jump in the webmail arena with there gmail and come up with very first time space of 1 GB , speed and interface flexibility, this new competitor spurred a wave of innovation in webmail. Big player of webmail Hotmail n Yahoo come under the pressure to upgrade there email service..
Then Microsoft come up with new email on 1st November,2005 with the codename of "Kahuna", which was released only few user for test in BETA form. 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.

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. 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 old MSN Hotmail interface was accessible only by 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.
The Hotmail development and operations teams are based in Mountain View, California.
In the year 2008 It was announced on the Windows Live Hotmail website that Windows Live Hotmail will be updated with having focus on improving the speed, will increasing the storage space from mere MB to GB, better user experience and usability features. It was announced that sign-in and email access speeds will be up to 70 percent faster. Windows Live Hotmail is also expected to integrate with Windows Live Web Messenger to provide instant messaging from the web interface. The classic and full versions of Windows Live Hotmail will also be combined with the new release.
Windows Live Hotmail was awarded PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award in February 2007 and again in March 2007 with a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.
As it is problem with web based email pf spammer which is used by the person for marketing and chain mailing,because of its wide availability, its popularity, and its ease of registration of new accounts. However, Hotmail does not tolerate this practice, and accounts engaging in these activities are terminated without warning.


In 2001 Hotmail service was compromised by computer hackers who discovered that anyone could log into their Hotmail account and then call messages from any other Hotmail account by crafting a URL with the second account's username and a valid message number. It was such an incredibly 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 and 31, 2001.
Microsoft's spam filter is known to discard legitimate emails without warning the receiving user. These emails are acknowledged to the sending user as having been successfully delivered, however they will not appear on the receiver's inbox or junk mail-folder. Mainly affecting small websites' registration procedures, this issue has prompted some sites to ban Microsoft emails altogether.

Hotmail is often criticized for allowing only paying subscribers to access it through the WebDAV protocol, which allows e-mails to be downloaded locally via a desktop e-mail client such as Microsoft Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird (with the Web Mail extension). WebDAV access was originally available to all Hotmail users, but the service was revoked from new free users since 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. In April 2008, Microsoft announced that Hotmail access through WebDAV would be entirely discontinued by June 30, 2008, in favor of the Microsoft-proprietary DeltaSync protocol, citing "obsolescence" of DAV and "greater capabilities" of DeltaSync as the reasons for discontinuing WebDAV support. In May 2008, Microsoft informed that WebDAV will be available longer, not giving a new deadline
For access through Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007, users can download the free Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, subject to passing the Office Genuine Advantage verification. Using the Outlook connector, users can freely access e-mail messages and contacts in any Hotmail account, though access to calendar, tasks and notes requires a premium subscription in addition to the original cost of the Outlook product. Another alternative for users is to use the Windows Live Mail desktop client which has built-in support for Hotmail. Both applications, Windows Live Mail and Microsoft Outlook can access Hotmail through the proprietary DeltaSync protocol.
POP3 access is now available for Hotmail Plus accounts as of Nov 2008. Hotmail plus costs $19.95 for each year the user is subscribed to the service. There are plans to offer POP access to all accounts, but this is not yet in effect.
A complaint which is quite common among its user is that when ever the email forward from hotmail it automatically insert advertisement, but its new avatar Windows Live Mail, however, do not carry automatically-added advertisements.]
On July 29, 2008, the full version of Windows Live Hotmail started to work correctly in Firefox 3 for some accounts. Support seems to be gradually rolling out to the various Windows Live Hotmail servers. As of August 26, 2008, Firefox 3 support is still not fully complete. 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. 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.
This year in the first week of December it roll out with lot of features through its home where user have 25GB of space and can share it with other user photos, video and music, also integrated Microsoft office live,calendar,mail.So for user it’s a really the best stuff and using them no fuss.