Hotmail is a gonner. It's now Outlook.com. There's money in mail.

Hotmail, the world's largest web-based email service, is no longer and is now Outlook.com

Microsoft who bought Hotmail in 1997, have had Outlook.com in beta testing for the past 7 months and now the takeover is complete. The changeover will take place gradually and users won't be forced to switch their Hotmail address to an outlook one, but new users will. So there will no disruption in service to existing users.

I have often wondered why the world's postal services brands, never got into online mail? Another example of big companies watching their business go by online? I think so.....

60 million people are using Outlook mail with 350 million using Hotmail and the new service will have many advanced features. The layout looks brighter and breezier with much more simplified tasks - so it has been designed with the user in mind.

It also allows easy interaction and integration with Social Media.

Hotmail was launched in 1996 and probably one of the first email addresses. Advertising overloaded then, the Ads have been streamlined to more direct, relevant text "google" style ads so they're less intrusive.

Generally, outlook.com is being viewed as "better" than Gmail but at the end of the day, mail is mail. However, it's interesting in that email services with large users who use it regularly daily, has not yet had the real business push? It seems to me a cool, good email brand is a winner and perhaps this is what Microsoft see too. There's no doubt too, that if me or you were asked to pay only a dollar or a euro a month for a mail service, we would.

In the case of Hotmail, that would bring in 350 million...a month. Even at 10 cents a month, it would rocket! So there's opportunity here.

But goodbye Hotmail. 
A founding Internet brand bites the dust.
As the Post Office watches it all happen.