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The electronic mailing system (called as e-mail) has seen a lot of developments today. Earlier, when the e-mails just started off on the internet was not completely made available to the general public, the services were used by programmers and scientists for the purpose of research and development.

We all use E-mails for communication over the internet. Ever since the internet started with its popularity in the 90s, the e-mail services also started hitting the road. Today, every person who uses the internet has an e-mail account.

With e-mails, you can also register yourself with many websites, the most common ones being the social media network sites. E-mails are used for both personal and professional purposes.

If you and your friend have e-mail accounts, you can exchange electronic messages with each other. This is one of the biggest advantages of having an e-mail account. So, now that you are able to understand the usefulness of an e-mail, let’s go ahead and read a few interesting facts about the Hotmail e-mail service.

Here are some of the important facts every beginner must learn about Hotmail.

1. Hotmail was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith on July 4, 1996. This is a web-based mail service and was introduced to the general public as a free e-mail service.

2. Hotmail derived its name from the computer language HTML(Hypertext Markup Language), which is used for developing web pages for viewing contents on the internet via a web browser. The type case for Hotmail is Hotmail and this type case symbolizes the HTML markup language in computer language.

3. When Microsoft acquired Hotmail in 1997 for a cost of $400 million, they renamed Hotmail to MSN Hotmail. Later, the name was changed to Windows Live and then again to Windows Live Hotmail. Currently, we know Hotmail as Outlook.com, after being re-branded in 2013.

4. In the year 1999, Hotmail became the world’s biggest webmail service with an estimated number of more than 30 million subscribers. Today, Outlook.com(formerly called Hotmail) has about 400 million active subscribers.

5. In 2004, Google entered into competition with Hotmail with their e-mail service called Gmail offering more storage space, speed and features to subscribers.
6. Earlier, Hotmail webmail service offered only 2MB of storage space to its subscribers. Today, their storage space has been increased to 5GB for free accounts and 10GB for premium accounts.

7. The date July 4, 1996, is marked as an important date for the Hotmail webmail service. It was in this year when Hotmail was launched as a service to its users worldwide. Another reason for the date, which is July 4, it is celebrated as the independence day for the United States of America. So, on this day, Hotmail announced as a free e-mail service and is often interchanged with the word ‘freedom’.

8. Hotmail, which then became known as Windows Live Hotmail, won the PC Magazine’s award in the years 2007 and 2011. PC Magazine is a website that tests software products and services and provides opinions to people on the internet.

9. When Hotmail was acquire by Microsoft and re-brand to Windows Live Mail. Microsoft wanted to completely phase out Hotmail and use their brand in its place.

10. The domain address of Hotmail, @hotmail.com, was changed to @outlook.comby Microsoft after 2012. So, an e-mail address of a user, say, john@hotmail.comwas transitioned to john@outlook.com.

Know these useful Hotmail facts

These are not only interesting facts about Hotmail but useful facts as well. If you are new to electronic mailing system and want to know of the existence of the popular Hotmail webmail service. Then simply go through the points that are mentioning above.

So, now each time you hear about e-mails, think of its evolution from Hotmail.