
How Hotmail changed Microsoft and email - ohjeez
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/12/how-hotmail-changed-microsoft-and-email-forever/
======
jjguy
If you like history like this, you should also read “showstopper: the
breakneck race to create Windows NT” (1). It profiles Cutler’s team as they go
through the period described briefly in this article to make Windows NT an
actual contender to the Unix-based OSes.

1- [https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-
Mic...](https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-
Microsoft/dp/0029356717)

~~~
ghaff
Showstopper is one of my favorite product development accounts. The other
classic is Soul of a New Machine, which has a hardware focus. I worked with
many of the folks in that book, albeit a few years after the event chronicled.

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V2hLe0ThslzRaV2
Anyone interested in story behind Hotmail should checkout:

"PS: I Love You. Get Your Free Email at Hotmail"

[https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/18/ps-i-love-you-get-your-
fre...](https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/18/ps-i-love-you-get-your-free-email-
at-hotmail/)

and here is the story of how Microsoft acquired Hotmail:

[https://twit.tv/shows/twit-bits/episodes/4597](https://twit.tv/shows/twit-
bits/episodes/4597)

~~~
lathiat
Relatedly unrelatedly reminded me of the ILOVEYOU virus:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOU)

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pablo-massa
Reading this story I find a correlation between Hotmail and WhatsApp, a simple
and free product that introduce to a massive audience a different way of
communication (Hotmail = Email, WhatsApp = Messaging).

And seeing how Hotmail lost relevance and Gmail take his place few years ago,
I'm wondering, is possible now that a massive product like WhatsApp can be
replaced with other that do the same thing in the same way? Why Gmail won?,
because the 1GB?, UI/UX?, Google marketing? Snapchat is losing to Instagram
because Instagram was a established product that start to mimic Snapchat, but
a new player that beat WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger? (not in China [1]).

Also, is WhatsApp/Messaging taking the place of email for younger audiences,
casual chat, non-work related communications? Oh, I have an idea, I will love
to have a "email" feature on Signal, move the asynchronous way of
communication of email to the messaging apps will be awesome to avoid the
attention economy / texting fatigue (and have encrypted email without the PGP
complexity!). A nice feature to Signal to differentiate from the competition
imo. I'm crazy?

[1] [https://www.similarweb.com/blog/popular-messaging-apps-by-
co...](https://www.similarweb.com/blog/popular-messaging-apps-by-country)

~~~
qubex
Hotmail and WhatsApp are very different because the first is devoid of network
effects, whilst the second isn’t. What I mean by this is that a Hotmail
account can send and/or receive email from any other email account, and hence
the relevant number for calculating utility is _how many other people have
email accounts_. This means that an email user can migrate from their previous
email provider (Hotmail?) to (say) Gmail and not experience any change in
utility because they continue to be a part of the same network.

WhatsApp on the other hand only communicates with other users that have
WhatsApp, so choosing to use another messaging service means you cease to be a
member of your existing network and cannot automatically communicate with all
your existing contacts unless they also switch networks (or add an app to
their phone — I currently have no less than eight messaging apps to stay in
contact with various people).

This means that transitions cannot be gradual and unilateral. This in turn
means that incumbent Hotmail was more fragile vis-a-vis newcomers such as
Gmail than WhatsApp is.

~~~
murukesh_s
That can also have a downside. For e.g. younger crowd were migrating from
WhatsApp because they already have their parents or older relatives there,
making a privacy issue and also making it less exclusive.

And if you have full contact access, they you really don't loose much network,
except the groups. Ya but it does need a strong motivation for a switch to
happen immediately (With hotmail it was ofcourse the lack of usernames for new
users + the 1GB tier in gmail). With WhatsApp there is no strong motivation
but perhaps a slower shift due to fatigue/privacy mentioned above.

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arca_vorago
Slightly offtopic, but I was a beta steam tester and used my hotmail for it at
the time in ~2002, and to this day my steam account name is still my hotmail
address, though they send email to the right place. So everytime I launch
steam I get a reminder of the hotmail days. I don't even own the address
anymore, I hope they never try to send email there.

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pablo-massa
The article does a good job digging on the dev/it details of the story, as a
designer, I will love to read about the UI/UX side, I think this field also
have lot of impact on how Hotmail history unfolded.

I remember this nice UX case study of Windows 95 that I found here in Hacker
News, it was gold
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12330899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12330899)

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dmarlow
Looking at that Hotmail login screen makes me think how much things have
evolved since then. It also makes me think whether we we're just technically
nascent during those days or if just severally limited.

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bluedino
I love the story behind the FreeBSD to NT switchover

~~~
blibble
if you think that one's good have a read about TradElect

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TradElect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TradElect)

a super high-profile project to show that Windows NT, SQL Server and .NET were
ready to run a high-availability, high-throughput, low-latency critical
system, which MS could then use as a case study for Windows replacing ancient
unix systems

you can guess how it all ended

you won't find any mention of TradElect on the MS "get the facts" website
these days...

~~~
kev009
I wonder how little that has to do with WinNT (which is actually a fabulous
kernel), and how much has to do with Accenture. When I saw Accenture as the
developer, alarm bells went off.

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cryptoz
Is MS Hotmail the email service that modified every outgoing mail to have an
advertisement for itself in each email? Kind of like a vastly more aggressive
and earlier version of 'Sent from my iPhone'? I can't remember if it was
Hotmail or Yahoo or both. But all the other advantages of Gmail aside, not
modifying your outgoing mail to include advertisements is a big one.

~~~
Feniks
Yep just give everything to the Google machine. What could possibly go wrong?

IIRC Google used to scan your emails to serve personal ads.

~~~
cryptoz
> IIRC Google used to scan your emails to serve personal ads.

Oh I assumed they still do. Did they stop that practice?

Also I'm not suggesting that giving everything to The Google Machine is a good
thing. I was just pointing out the super sleazy gross tactics.

~~~
noisem4ker
They stopped last june: [https://qz.com/1014816/google-will-no-longer-mine-
your-email...](https://qz.com/1014816/google-will-no-longer-mine-your-emails-
for-advertising-data/)

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late2part
I hear a guy named Mike Meyers made a lot of it happen in practice!!!

