A routine sever firmware update resulted in an anything but routine outage for Microsoft’s Outlook and Hotmail. On March 12, Outlook.com and Hotmail were unavailable to some users, and as Microsoft details in a blog post, a firmware update caused servers to overheat and go offline for 16 hours. Apparently similar firmware updates had been successfully deployed in the past but something went… → Read More
Shortly after 4:00pm EDT on March 12 some Hotmail users took to Twitter, reporting they couldn’t access their mail. Microsoft responded at 5:35pm confirming the service outage and stating that they were working on restoring the service. Well, it’s been over 12 hours since then, and Microsoft’s email services are still down for some. → Read More
As we reported last month, Microsoft decided to start migrating its old-school Hotmail users over to its shiny new Outlook service. That migration process might not be going so well, as users have flooded sites like Twitter with reports of downtime to the tune of three hours. Its migration approach was to be a slow one, with the move being optional at first. Regardless of the reason, three hours… → Read More
Six months after its initial launch, the preview of Outlook.com, Microsoft’s free webmail service that is meant to replace the aging Hotmail brand and design, now has over 60 million active users according to the company’s own data. Today, Microsoft is officially taking Outlook.com out of preview and will start prompting its 360 million Hotmail users to switch to the new service (while keeping… → Read More
Google has long been running a number of experimental Search and Gmail field trials anybody can sign up for and today it’s launching a few nifty new search features for searching your Gmail inbox from Google.com on the desktop and your iOS or Android phone. Previously, Google already let you find you flights by using the [my flights] search operator, but now you can also use queries like [my… → Read More
People want to know: is the new Outlook.com just a reskinned and rebranded version of Microsoft’s Hotmail, aka Windows Live Mail? Answer: Um, sort of. Maybe? OK, the truth is, it’s a little hard to prove. But there are a few things worth pointing out. Microsoft stated that Outlook.com is “a break from the past,” and that it built “a brand new service from the ground up.” But if it’s an all-new… → Read More
Microsoft Hotmail is getting a makeover. At least, that’s what some leaked screenshots are showing. The service, which today is still branded under the “Windows Live” umbrella, is going to be slimmed down and simplified, giving it a Metro-style look and feel.
The details were obtained yesterday via Microsoft enthusiast site LiveSide, and they’ve now amassed a whole collection of screenshots… → Read More
Back in November 2006, I published the Top 10 Greatest Internet Digital Media M&A Deals of All Time. It included eBay’s $1.5 billion acquisition of PayPal, Yahoo’s $1.6 billion acquisition of Overture, and Microsoft’s $400 million purchase of Hotmail back in 1998. It also included News Corp’s $580 million acquisition of MySpace. Don’t laugh. The list was published a month after the… → Read More
Microsoft’s newly announced Hotmail for Android application is available now in the Android Market. The app, which aims to serve the world’s largest webmail platform, offers a handful of standard features including push email, synced calendar and contacts, support for multiple accounts and more.
More interesting, perhaps, is the related news that Hotmail will finally become available as a… → Read More
Microsoft Hotmail doesn’t get much love in Silicon Valley these days, but the service has been steadily making improvements to the product, particularly over the last 18 months or so. And today it’s giving a boost to its ‘Active Views’ product — which sets out to make email quicker and more interactive than the sort we’re used to — by adding new partners including Posterous, and… → Read More
Ever wished you could have multiple email addresses that all routed to the same inbox, without having to set up a bunch of different accounts and forwarding options? Hotmail — yes, the email service you probably haven’t looked at in years — has just added a very handy new alias feature that lets you do just this. In other words, I can now setup a Hotmail inbox that lets me seamlessly handle… → Read More
These days, most emails you get from major services like LinkedIn or Orbitz are full of rich graphics and other elements that make the message feel more like a webpage than the basic text emails from days of yore. But there’s been a key thing missing: these emails are all static, so their content goes stale. Depending on how often you check your inbox, that hot deal from Orbitz may be long gone by… → Read More
Dear Microsoft,
Remember me? I’m that guy at TechCrunch who actually defends you and your products, when appropriate, and whenever people start talking that crazy talk about you.
I would like to genuinely thank you for your part in making Web-based email popular with Hotmail – now called Windows Live Hotmail I see – and all. My wife still proudly hands out her @hotmail.com address whenever… → Read More
Back in the days before Gmail, webmail on the Internet was really, really bad. Inboxes were limited to 10 or 20 megabytes, interfaces were slow and ugly, and the experience simply didn’t come close to matching what most desktop clients offered. This is how I remember Hotmail. I hated it. In fact, since signing up for Gmail in 2004, the only times I’ve checked out Microsoft’s webmail client were… → Read More
With Bing stealing the online spotlight at Microsoft recently, Windows Live has been collecting dust in a corner. But Microsoft is preparing to update the core services that make up Windows Live over the next few months, and is refocusing what used to be a hodgepodge of different online services into three main products: Hotmail, Messenger, and Windows Essentials (which includes photo-organizing… → Read More
“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.” – Microsoft statement on Google Buzz.
When one of the big guys launches a new product, competitors generally just sit it out and let the press do its thing. → Read More
The following is an excerpt from Adam L. Penenberg’s new book, Viral Loop: From Facebook To Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves.
Simply by designing your product the right way, you can build an insanely fast-growing business from scratch. No advertising or marketing budget, no need for a sales force, and venture capitalists will flock to throw money at you.
Many of the most… → Read More
Come on, people. You’re probably aware of the big Hotmail scandal going on right now, what with some 30,000 account names and passwords having been leaked over the past few days. And now Gmail and Yahoo! e-mail accounts appear to have been compromised. The thing is, these leaks aren’t the result of a software glitch or anything, but the result of successful phishing attacks. I have one question… → Read More
Microsoft has upgraded its Quick Add feature in Hotmail, first announced earlier this year, with a number of features from their new Bing search engine.
We’re not talking about a small number of users who will be affected. Hotmail is still by far the largest web mail provider on the Internet, with 343 million monthly users according to Comscore. Second and third are Yahoo (285 million) and Gmail… → Read More
We’ll say it right off the bat: what the hell took Microsoft so long? Years after Yahoo and Google integrated web IM features into their free webmail services (Yahoo Messenger in Yahoo Mail and Gtalk in Gmail, respectively), Redmond is finally enabling users to log into their Hotmail accounts and converse with their contacts over instant messaging directly without the need to log on to Windows… → Read More
Google launched Gmail only four years ago, and it is now the fourth most popular e-mail service on the Web after Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and Windows Live Hotmail. In 2008, it saw some serious growth in the U.S. Google doesn’t break out the number of Gmail users, but comScore estimates unique monthly visitors. According to the latest stats, the number of people visiting Gmail grew 43 percent last… → Read More
It’s 2009. Storage is so cheap that Email providers like Yahoo are literally giving you as much space as you want. Yet we still have to deal with archaic policies that allow these Email providers to delete everything in our inboxes if, for whatever reason, we forget to login for a few months.
The time limits vary: Yahoo cuts you off at 4 months, Windows Live Hotmail at 60 days, and Gmail after… → Read More
I’m not sure how many BlackBerry users also use Hotmail, but the three or four of them will be happy to know that BlackBerry devices will soon support push Hotmail. Oh, and Windows Live Messenger, too. → Read More
Microsoft’s new ajax Hotmail client, called Kahuna, is massively expanding its beta group today, to approximatley 200,000 users. Until today the beta was extremely difficult to get into, frustrating some hotmail users. We’ve been beta testing Kahuna for a few weeks. It is a big improvement on the old Hotmail interface, using ajax to provide a much more Outlook-like email experience. → Read More
Company: Kahuna (Hotmail Ajax Beta) Status: in private beta Location: Mountain View, CA Previous Profile: August 16, 2005 Kahuna – Extreme Marketing I am a little bit annoyed right now. Sometimes people get a little too cute. Microsoft’s Kahuna may be falling into that category. I’m pretty excited about Kahuna because I love ajax and this is going to be one cool ajax application. → Read More
Company: Kahuna (Hotmail Ajax Beta) Status: in private beta Location: Mountain View, CA Kahuna (the new hotmail with Ajax) hasn’t launched yet, but the Start.com team (profile) has been working on it seriously since May 2005 and it is now in private beta testing (updated). From posts by the Kahuna team (see below) and various beta testers (and others watching the space), it looks like it as… → Read More
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