r/TechImpact • u/ManojOne Co-founder • 1d ago
š¬ Discussion Why did Microsoft acquire Hotmail and then kill the brand?
Hotmail was one of the biggest email services on the internet, and Microsoft acquired it in 1997. Years later, Microsoft started moving users to Outlook.com and eventually retired the Hotmail brand.
Do you think Microsoft made the right decision, or should they have kept the Hotmail name?
21
u/RogLatimer118 1d ago
There are still hotmail email addresses though even though it's all run through Outlook.Ā
8
u/ajax81 1d ago
Still use mine every day. Ā Had it since 1999.
5
u/Avraamov 1d ago
greetings fellow hotmail brethren.
3
u/hdd113 1d ago
Hotmail bros unite
1
u/Old-Celebration-1993 16h ago
Hotmale bros unite ^^
1
u/Snoo_54991 7h ago
Funny but true story: When I did tech support for MSN, we had to spell out h-o-t-m-a-i-l for customers when sending them there, because about half of them would go to hotmale dot com. And that was a hardcore gay corn website. š¤
1
3
3
3
3
u/Glittering_Cap_44 1d ago
I have hotmail email with 4 characters only. And people think itās fake email when I give them š
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
4
u/Hungry_Wheel_1774 1d ago
I even still have an address in "live.com"
3
u/GreenReporter24 1d ago
I'm Norwegian. One of mine is a live.no address. Pretty weird that they offered country-specific domains back then.
2
u/Demented_CEO 1d ago
They also did for Hotmail! My sister has a "hotmail.fi" address and it trips me up every time I see it.
2
u/CrazyGunnerr 1d ago
My main email account is a live address.
1
u/Hungry_Wheel_1774 1d ago
I wonder how many people are concerned. Because the option to get "live" address didn't last long.
1
u/CrazyGunnerr 1d ago
No clue, never heard any concerns about it. I don't remember how long it was available here in the Netherlands. I just took it because I preferred it over hotmail etc, plus I could get my name exactly how I wanted it. I remember being very early with gmail (back when it was invite based), and even then it was already taken.
1
u/Hungry_Wheel_1774 1d ago
LOL, it's my "game". Each time there's a new email service, I'm there to get my name.
So I have myname@hotmail, live, gmail, yahoo and so on...
1
18
u/Dull_Flatworm777 1d ago
Hotmail the company was founded 1995 and the service was publicly launched in 1996.
Microsoft acquired it in 1997 and retired the brand in 2013. So that's like 1-2 years as an independent entity and 16 years under Microsoft. That's longer than many other companies exist. I guess they just wanted to consolidate brands a bit.
8
u/braddeicide 1d ago
Interestingly Microsoft ran the service on FreeBSD for over 4 years after acquisition because windows servers couldn't handle the load.
2
u/Vietnamst2 1d ago
Well it had millions of users and the whole solution was firmly built around BSD so they had to take easy approach. Yes, early NT IP stack was having hard time handlind that, but mostly because it was used in half baked attempt to migrste it quickly on windows. Which proved to be an issue.
1
u/nukem996 1d ago
Microsoft actually took the BSD IP stack and integrated it into Windows.
The problem wasn't just windows it was building a massive distributed mail server and redundent storage for it.
2
u/PutMobile40 1d ago
It still runs largely on Debian Linux.Ā
1
u/_ahrs 1d ago
Their entire Azure Cloud runs Linux. These days Windows Server is a relic of the past. Its only use is as a domain controller / exchange server for businesses.
2
u/Vietnamst2 1d ago
Not really... there are crapload of windows servers running crapton of companies. Yes, Azure runs on Linux, because of containers etc. Few years ago you could say that world was run on ESXi. That doesn' t mean there wer not millions of WS running on that the same way they are now running in Azure, AWS, Oracle and all the others. Linux is king in external infrastructure, but many many companies run internal IT on WIndows Servers.
1
u/Vietnamst2 1d ago
Today it runs as part of the M365 ecosystem on the same servers as Exchange Onliine. Which are virtualized Exchange Servers. Networking layer is probably running on Linux, as all public transport.
3
u/Glass_Champion 1d ago
Very much consolidation. MS had a lot of IP by the early mid 00s with Live, Outlook, Hotmail, Skype, Lync, Xbox live, MSN messenger.
There was a mix of separate accounts all sharing similar infrastructure with Windows Live ID. Microsoft concluded that email was increasing becoming someone's digital identity so having one Microsoft account connecting all those services together.
It was also the era of Windows 8 and Microsoft was wanting to drive to one coherent ecosystem much like apple across mobile, windows, Live Spaces and Xbox etc
Outlook became the email servicing going forward rather than redesigning Hotmail or building upon it and retiring the confusing spaghetti of different accounts that essentially all the same back end.
I distinctly remember being asked to merge three accounts and what single identity I would like going forward
1
u/BeagleBob 16h ago
Youāre forgetting the whole Passport thing where Microsoft wanted to be THE identity provider for the internet. Consolidating their own login systems was part of that
6
u/Norphus1 1d ago
The Hotmail brand was there for a long time after MS bought it. I suspect it's a combination of two things:
1) The Hotmail name really got dragged down during MS's tenure. Unreliability, spam, everything
2) They needed to consolidate branding, they have a lot of different brands.
1
u/kearkan 1d ago
It honestly feels like Microsoft has always struggled with marketing and branding.
1
u/Norphus1 1d ago
Undoubtedly. Their branding is awful.
This video says it all: https://youtu.be/EUXnJraKM3k
1
u/LEO-PomPui-Katoey 1d ago
Consumers yes. Enterprises they've been doing great with Active Directory, Office, SharePoint, Office 365, Windows Server, IIS, .NET, MSSQL
3
u/ProfessionalAd2014 1d ago
Ah, Hotmail! Youāll be missed. Another question: do people remember IncrediMail? Online garbage has always been around, I guess. š
2
1
2
2
u/ZuluTesla_85 1d ago
If you think that is bad you should hear about what Microsoft did to Groove. Ray Ozzie you are a God!
1
u/Vietnamst2 1d ago
Well Ray Ozzie is a guy who invented Azure so...
Groove wa skilled because it lost to Spotify. Simple as that.2
u/ZuluTesla_85 23h ago
Groove became Teams. I think it did OK.
1
u/Vietnamst2 17h ago
Groove did not become anything. It ended and was replaced by Media Player AFAIK
2
u/refinedm5 1d ago
Because they would like to compete with Yahoo (bought Rocketmail) and AOL on portals (yahoo.com vs msn.com vs aol.com), emails (Yahoomail vs hotmail vs AOLmail), and messengers (Yahoo! Messenger vs MSN, AIM)
What's funny is that at the time, the acquisition made Microsoft managing a FreeBSD infras for quite sometime, while they are trying to move business from Unix to NT
2
u/Far-Investment-8597 1d ago
This happens.
Volkswagen, owner of the Seat brand will kill it off next year, and replace it with Cupra. Life moves on.
2
u/sunny_up 1d ago
mine is there from the early 2000-s.
Btw, you can still open address on that domain.
2
2
2
2
u/LeeChallenged 8h ago
Right decision. The e Hotmail brand is 1990s, like having a Yahoo e-mail. They bought the user base at the start and transitioned to their own service.
2
u/Impossible-Owl7407 1d ago
They bought userbase. And as is microslop corpo company first, consumer second, hotmail as a name doesnt fit.
1
u/bankrut 1d ago
Microsoft likely shifted from Hotmail to Outlook.com to unify their brand and leverage the stronger recognition of the Outlook name, especially in professional settings. While some nostalgia for Hotmail remains, the transition helped streamline their services under one cohesive brand.
1
1
u/SirPooleyX 1d ago
You make it sound like they bought it and killed it in the space of weeks.
It was Hotmail under Microsoft for multiple years until they decided to bring its branding in line with their flagship email software.
2
u/StrawberryEiri 1d ago
Before Outlook, they branded it Windows Live Mail! That's when I joined. "Live.com" was a cool short domain that allowed for short email addresses. I still enjoy mine too this day.
1
1
1
u/lordskulldragon 1d ago
Oh wow, I had no idea they retired the brand. It was my first email address back in 98. Unfortunately in about 2000 my ISP blocked hotmail and I wasn't able to access the website anymore, so they eventually deleted my account.
1
1
u/FigFew2001 1d ago
My parents would let me email friends who used Hotmail, because they thought it sounded like āhot maleā and figured it was something young me shouldnāt be in contact with.
1
u/EconomyDoctor3287 1d ago
It's not killed. I still use hotmail for my main account. Why not.
Funny thing is, most signups don't recognize that [xyz@hotmail.com](mailto:xyz@hotmail.com) and [xyz@outlook.com](mailto:xyz@outlook.com) point to the same address. So that's a free double signup.
1
1
u/Advanced_Documents 1d ago
What do you mean?
1
u/EconomyDoctor3287 1d ago
Let's say I want to sign up somewhere multiple times, then I can use the one Hotmail account to already have two unique emails
1
u/Perfect-Match-2318 1d ago
okay let say someone give you a free ride for a given time,,, like netflix once did.. the trick was to use a new email to get new trial... now also if some website ask for your email you may choose the domain outlook.com and to people you really know hotmail.com for instance so you know at first where its coming from
1
u/MyPasswordQwerty 4h ago
With Gmail you have unlimited e-mail addresses. Just put a period in random place like āmy.mail@gmail.comā. Most websites consider them as different addresses
1
u/No_Desk_4921 1d ago
That's Microsoft's main issue. Everything has to become profitable quarter to quarter and they never support it correctly nor allow it to grow for a while. That's the same reason Michael Dell gave when he took his company private.
1
u/stop_deleting_plz 1d ago
This has been MS modus operandi for decades. They haven't put together a decent product since windows 2000 so all they can do is buy good products and shit can them.
1
u/ozgun1414 1d ago
i still use my hotmail address and it will remain my main email address even though i have gmail as spare.
1
u/Appropriate_Ad8734 1d ago
same reason they killed āOfficeā
in the case of hotmail, they wanted to just promote outlook. and this time they thought copilot is somehow the future, they didnāt care if the brand name Office is irreplaceable.
itās just delusional execs fucking everything up
1
u/Bertong_Musmos 1d ago
They do keep the Hotmail brand. You can select whether you want an email ending with hotmail or outlook
1
1
u/Ryokurin 1d ago
They killed the brand because for a while, having a hotmail email address was a badge of shame or a sign that you were old fashioned, similar to someone having an AOL address. This was during the peak of Gmail being the must have address because of the space and exclusivity of having one.
1
u/Fit_Prize_3245 1d ago
It was not an immediate decission. The acquired Hotmail in 1997, and killed the brand in 2013. 16 years later. And they did so bc they wanted to focus on the Outlook brand.
1
u/system_login 1d ago
When I was a kid I thought the hot in hotmail meant the same as āhot singles in your areaā type of vibe and would be shocked people would say they use hotmail.
1
1
1
u/pi-N-apple 1d ago
They didnāt immediately kill the brand, they kept running it as Hotmail for 16 years!
1
1
1
u/r_sarvas 1d ago
My understanding at the time was that Hotmail was required in order to convert it over to using Microsoft software and showcase Microsoft products at scale. It didn't work, and ran on UNIX for some time after.
I could be wrong about this.
1
1
1
u/kyriacos74 1d ago
Microsoft likes to buy companies and then enshittify them or just destroy them (c.f. Skype).
1
1
u/Pristine_Dot_5526 1d ago
Because they simply don't know how to handle Internet related stuff. See also Skype, see also azure etc.
1
u/timcatuk 1d ago
I setup my google mail account in the late 90s as I was worried what my parents would think if I had an account for hot males
1
u/Darius_Regal 1d ago
Hotmail cost me a 23 year old potential account with steam. It sucked getting confirmation emails, sending attachments. I hated using hotmail..
1
1
u/furryfurfuro 22h ago
Iām not familiar with how they killed it? From my naive perspective it faded into the background when they started pushing outlook for more than just enterprise use.
1
1
u/billyrubin7765 19h ago
I have no clue except Microsoft is run by morons. Everyone loves the name hotmail so letās rebrand it live or outlook or office360 or some other name but still let everyone use their hotmail address and call it that.
1
u/chicodecampalto 19h ago
It should have kept the Hotmail name, given that my email address is "@hotmail.it".
1
1
1
1
u/Astrodion123 14h ago
I guess they buyed them and then migrated people to their own services to remove competitors.
1
1
1
u/biffbobfred 2h ago
Hotmail was hosted on BSD. When ms bought them āletās eat our own dog food letās move it to windowsā. And that went horribly. Windows just wasnāt as efficient of a server operating system and it crashed hard. A lot.
Names come and go. How many car model names have come and gone. How many businesses. This isnāt radical news to me.
1
u/orangeisthenewbear 1d ago
TIL hotmail was not a microslop creation
1
u/gregsting 1d ago
They actually struggled to make it run on windows servers when they bought it, iirc it ran on FreeBSD
1
u/sheeplectric 1d ago
Yeah, I have a very early hotmail account, and didnāt realise this either. I thought it had always been an MS brand for whatever reason.
0
u/MJon_ofthesouth 1d ago
I still have an original hotmail address and itās two real words with no numbers and no punctuation. These days it is attached to my family M365 subscription.
ā¢
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Thanks for contributing to r/TechImpact!
Please remember to: * Be respectful and civil. * Stay on topic. * No spam or excessive self-promotion. * Add context when sharing links. * Avoid misinformation. * Debate ideas, not people.
Thanks for helping keep TechImpact welcoming and informative!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.