If you’ve been on the Internet for a long time, there’s a good chance Hotmail was your first email address. Launched in 1996, Hotmail was bought by Microsoft the following year, and the service has gone through myriad changes since then. Today, Microsoft is making its most radical change yet to the 16-year-old email service.
For starters, the Hotmail brand is toast. Microsoft is rebranding the service under the Outlook banner, moving the service to Outlook.com. The Hotmail site will still be there, and users won’t be forced to make the switch — yet — but the message is clear: Going forward, Microsoft email is called Outlook.