PaniSphere

12 May 2008 | websites

Hotmail, founded by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia in 1995, was commercially launched on July 4, 1996, Independence Day in the United States, symbolically represented freedom of ISPs. Jack Smith first had the idea of access to e-mail via the Web from any computer anywhere in the world, originally with the momentum to traverse corporate firewalls blocking the normal mail service. When Sabeer Bhatia said the business plan for the mail service, tried all sorts of names ending in “-mail” and finally decided on Hotmail because it included the letters “HTML” - the language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with a selective use of capitals.

Subsequently, the company Microsoft purchased and is now part of its MSN network. In December 1997, administers nearly 9 million people subscribed. In February 1999 there were over 30 million in 2005 serves more than 200 million users, extends in many countries, 17 languages and is one of the largest worldwide. Between late 2005 and early 2006, Hotmail in Mexico joins the Mexican telecommunications company Prodigy (owned by Telmex), changing its name to “Prodigy MSN Hotmail” and retaining the maximum capacity of 5 GB

More information

Hotmail does not allow access to the contents of mailboxes. It is therefore impossible stored on the computer a copy of the emails (except saving pages that show one by one). It does not allow POP and although previously allowed access by WebDAV, which gave an advantage to the software Microsoft Outlook Express, this feature was removed on the pretext of avoiding spam sent by this method. The old accounts using WebDAV to retrieve the mail kept such functionality, although we no longer have new accounts or those not it be used. However since 2006 in which launched the Live version of this service, added new features such as the use of “Windows Live Mail desktop” that reminds managers mail such as Microsoft Outlook.

Windows Live Hotmail offers 5 GB of storage (though there is a limit of 10 MB attachments) to users in Honduras, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, Spain, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines United, Uruguay and Venezuela; users in other countries get a limit of 2 GB in the mailbox. This substantial increase in the size of the mailbox was introduced shortly before the debut of Gmail (Google). Currently, customers can pay a fee to receive 20 MB attachments (MSN Hotmail Plus) and 10 GB of storage (Windows Live Mail Plus) próximamente.A late 2005 Hotmail drew a project called Windows Live Mail, which changed totally aspect of the inbox and offer 2 GB of free storage. But in January 2007, a representative of the company announced that this enhanced service, still in beta testing (beta), will be called “Windows Live Hotmail”, rather than the name they had chosen previously, “Windows Live Mail” it has 5 GB of capacity.

Official website: Hotmail