Outlook.com

Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service and a website offered by Microsoft. It includes a webmail interface featuring mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services. Outlook can also be accessed via email clients using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) or Post Office Protocol (POP) protocols.
There are around 500 million users using Outlook.com.https://web.archive.org/web/20170118202051/http://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/ Outlook is offered with any Microsoft account, using @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @msn.com, as well as @live.com and @passport.com domains.
==Background==
OutlookApp.jpg
The background of Outlook.com consists of multiple sections on the left side, ranging from quick accesses to a list of emails users just created, and the bar on the top side, which feature additional controls, allowing them to create a new message for whom users want to send it, archive it, delete it, and so on. When a user clicks on a message that has been received, the display of the inbox will be shown to the user. Users can reply, forward or delete the mail. Users are also allowed to add multiple accounts and emails for different purposes.
==History==
===Hotmail===
Hotmail service was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, and was one of the first webmail services on the Internet. It was commercially launched on July 4, 1996, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based email.https://web.archive.org/web/20070210043942/http://4to40.com/legends/print.asp?id=131 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. The limit for free storage was 2 megabytes.http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/01/06/a-short-history-of-hotmail.aspx Hotmail was initially backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. By December 1997, it had more than 8.5 million subscribers.https://web.archive.org/web/20200611171805/https://www.cnet.com/news/hotmail-microsoft-talk-deals/ Hotmail initially ran under Solaris for mail services and Apache on FreeBSD for web services, before being partly converted to Microsoft products, using Windows Services for UNIX in the migration path.https://web.archive.org/web/20120306180619/http://www.lege.com/unix-nt/hotmail.htmlhttps://web.archive.org/web/20121011014112/http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb496990.aspx
===MSN Hotmail===
In December 2017, Hotmail was sold to Microsoft for a reported $400 million, which was actually ~$705 million as in 2023 report, and it joined the MSN group of services.https://web.archive.org/web/20170116191143/https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-buys-hotmail/
In February 1999, Hotmail quickly gained in popularity as it was localized for different markets around the globe, and became the world's largest webmail service with more than 30 million active members using it.
Hotmail originally ran on a mixture of FreeBSD and Solaris operating systems.https://web.archive.org/web/20071108203351/http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html#_Toc491601828 A project was started to move Hotmail to Windows 2000. In June 2001, Microsoft claimed this had been completed; a few days later they retracted the statement and admitted that the DNS functions of the Hotmail system were still reliant on FreeBSD. In 2002 Hotmail still ran its infrastructure on UNIX servers, with only the front-end converted to Windows 2000.
===Security issues===
In 1999, hackers revealed a security flaw in Hotmail that permitted anybody to log in to any Hotmail account using the password 'eh'. At the time, it was called "the most widespread security incident in the history of the Web". "Hotmail Hackers: 'We Did It'"
In 2001, the Hotmail service was compromised again by computer hackers who discovered that anyone could log in to their Hotmail account and then pull messages from any other Hotmail account by crafting a URL with the second account's username and a valid message number. The exploitable vulnerability caused by hackers exposed millions of accounts to tampering between August 7 and 31, 2001.https://web.archive.org/web/20240614105402/https://www.theregister.com/2001/08/20/hacking_hotmail_made_easy
===Windows Live Hotmail===
Microsoft's new email system was announced on November 1, 2005, under the codename "Kahuna", and a beta version was released to a few thousand testers. 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.https://web.archive.org/web/20190719070230/https://hotmailteam.wordpress.com/2006/07/17/m7-new-code-shipping-soon-not-yet-here/
After a period of beta testing, it was officially released to new and existing users in the Netherlands on November 9, 2006, as a pilot market. Development of the beta was finished in April 2007, and Windows Live Hotmail was released to new registrations on May 7, 2007, as the 260 million MSN Hotmail accounts worldwide gained access to the new system. The old MSN Hotmail interface was accessible only by users who registered before the Windows Live Hotmail release date and had not chosen to update to the new service. The rollout to all existing users was completed in October 2007.
Windows Live Hotmail was awarded PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award in February 2007https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2091600,00.asp, March 2007https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2107834,00.asp, and February 2011.https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363870,00.asp
Throughout 2011, Microsoft added several new features to Hotmail, such as aliaseshttps://web.archive.org/web/20130225060104/http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/02/03/hotmail-delivers-aliases-to-help-you-manage-and-secure-your-email-account.aspx and speed improvementshttps://web.archive.org/web/20131004053912/http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/06/30/instant-email-how-we-made-hotmail-10x-faster.aspx. In October 2011, Microsoft unveiled a "re-invented Hotmail", and added many new features such as Instant Actions, scheduled Sweep, and Categories and this update began fully rolling out on November 9, 2011.https://web.archive.org/web/20111114005120/http://www.liveside.net/2011/11/09/new-hotmail-begins-rolling-out-coming-to-all-customers-in-next-few-weeks
===Outlook.com===
Outlook.com was first introduced on July 31, 2012, when its beta version was made available to the general public. Existing Hotmail users could freely upgrade to the preview version of Outlook.com and downgrade back.https://web.archive.org/web/20120818234950/http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2012/07/31/introducing-outlook-com-modern-email-for-the-next-billion-mailboxes.aspx
On August 8, 2017, Outlook.com featured a new opt-in beta toggle allowing users to test upcoming changes, including a faster inbox, a responsive design, and the ability to search for emojis.https://web.archive.org/web/20170913044442/https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/08/microsoft-outlook-com-beta/ On October 30, 2017, Microsoft announced that it would phase out its "Outlook.com Premium" subscription service, which offered features such as expanded storage and removal of ads from the user interface.https://web.archive.org/web/20171031040807/https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/30/16572758/microsoft-outlook-premium-office-365-subscription-features
==Gallery==
:See this page from Logopedia
==References==
Category:Websites
Category:Websites registered in 1996
Category:Email services
Category:Websites with the .com domain