The Evolution of HoTMmaiL

HoTmailL was founded in 1996 as Hotmail (stylized as HoTMaiL) by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith in Mountain View, California, and headquartered in Sunnyvale. Microsoft acquired Hotmail in 1997 for an estimated $400 million and launched it as MSN Hotmail, later re-branded to Windows Live Hotmail as part of the Windows Live suite of products. Microsoft released the final version of Hotmail in October 2011 and it was replaced by Outlook.com in 2012.

Hotmail was one of the first webmail services on the Internet. It was commercially launched on July 4, 1996, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based email and the ability to access a user's inbox from anywhere in the world.

The name "Hotmail" was chosen out of many possibilities ending in "-mail" as it included the letters HTML, the markup language used to create web pages (to emphasize this, the original type casing was "HoTMaiL"). The limit for free storage was 2 MB (Yes, Only 2 Megabytes).

Hotmail.com provides a list of almost 50 keyboard shortcuts for web users with visual impairment, blindness or other disabilities.

In early 2018, Outlook.com had a reported 400 million active users.