Windows Live Hotmail Will Continue to Evolve in 2008

Windows Live Mail is not such a distant memory for many of us. Microsoft has been building the web-based email service under the Windows Live brand umbrella under that name, until roughly the beginning of 2007. In early February of this year, Windows live mail got a Hotmail twist to it. At that time, Richard Sim, Live Senior Product Manager, revealed that user feedback managed to impact the brand of Windows Live Mail. In this context, the final version of the email service was rebranded as Windows Live Hotmail, just before the Milestone 9 release of the service. Despite the name change, Windows Live Hotmail was, by no means, a hybrid between the MSN and Windows Live mail services, but the continuation of the Live Mail project.

"The Hotmail team started working on Windows Live Hotmail back in 2004, with the goal of making web-based e-mail easier, faster, and safer", recalled Ellie Powers, program manager, Windows Live Hotmail. "Our MSN Hotmail code base was also getting pretty rickety, so we wanted to start over from scratch to create a new code base that would be easier to maintain and develop on. When we started thinking about what belongs in the new Hotmail, we focused on the most core features of e-mail and analyzed how e-mail fits into the lives of our hundreds of millions of customers around the world."

At that time, with the service in beta stage, the Redmond company started gathering user input. Powers revealed that Microsoft had went live with the public beta of Windows Live Hotmail before the product was ready, but in development stage where it was still far from being feature-complete. This move was deemed a necessary gambit in order to collect user feedback.

"We did these iterations for about two years, until May 2007, when our data showed that Windows Live Hotmail was good enough to get out of beta. We did another release in the fall of 2007 that we have been moving our MSN Hotmail users to. We are eternally grateful to everyone who has taken the time to give constructive feedback. You have influenced what we built and which order we built the parts in. Windows Live Hotmail in 2007 is so much better than it was two years ago", Powers added.

But, Microsoft is not ready to stop here with Windows Live Hotmail. Having introduced 5 GB of storage as well as @live.com email addresses, the Redmond company is looking forward to the coming year for the continued growth of Windows Live Hotmail. "And we are not done yet! Hotmail will continue to evolve for years to come - we have some really cool ideas for the next year that we're just starting to plan", Powers concluded.