Why Hotmail is still the leading provider of e-mail?
The email service Hotmail.com was the first for many years now. Since the beginning of July 4, 1996 has been incredibly successful. The company then was independently founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. There is, though it is unclear if it actually happened, that the real reason for launching the service on July 4 was the independence to represent the U.S. in particular. Hotmail was born that day, which is the leading provider of free email in the world, thanks to that, you can check your mail anywhere in the world without any difficulty.
Because at the time (the mid-90s) there were many service providers of e-mail, Hotmail became the main attraction, which guaranteed him a success almost immediately, because it was a new service, and until then, little exploited. The free Hotmail e-mail proved to be a significant turning point on the Internet, which opened the door and expanded the landscape in terms of electronic communication, and how that information can travel from one corner of the world to another , almost instantly.
Hotmail in 1997
The humble beginnings
Few know the name of Hotmail was chosen from a pun using the acronym HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), took the freedom to form words Hot and Mail, wrote HoTMaiL originally referring to the language Hypertext Markup, which then began to be popular. Because of this, the first sketches of the service made extensive use of this language to process the users email .. And so began a service that has been well received since its inception and still today, is the number one service
when we speak of free email accounts.
Despite its humble beginnings, Hotmail began to gain relevance and momentum. He became a media boom, so that captured the attention of many people, including members of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investment firm dedicated to finance Internet startups. With the injection of cash received, Hotmail continued to grow exponentially, so that in the year 1997, the service already had more than 8 million unique users and a half. For this and other reasons, Microsoft was interested in the service. Given the status of the company at the time, allowed himself the luxury of buying the mail service in the amount of $ 400 million. Moving into the hands of Microsoft, the service changed its name, becoming known as MSN Hotmail, and adopting the name Windows Live Hotmail later as part of a corporate strategy of the company from Redmond. That is their current name (officially).
Of the 8 million and a half that had the service in 1997, it is estimated that in 2009 there were over 340 million unique users around the world, confirming that not only Hotmail service is still the leader but still growing at an impressive pace and seems to not stop in a long time, or at least in the medium term.
Hotmail in 2000
FreeBSD to Windows
Since the product is Microsoft’s flagship Windows operating system, many find it strange to know that in the beginning, Hotmail was hosted on servers running under the Solaris and FreeBSD. The stability that provides a UNIX server is almost insurmountable, but Microsoft, in an attempt to further improve the image of Windows, decided to move the service to servers running Windows Server, which involved a series of terrible problems in the beginning. In 2000 there was mass migration of servers when they began to compatibility issues and the service started to record falls that affected millions of users around the world.
Later he had a record of attack by hackers who were seeking to find a security hole. Apparently the attack worked, it was able to give a password (very trivial indeed) which gave privileged access to the user who knew her, could thus, breaking free in the management system, endangering the users account . When the situation seemed calmer, more attacks came. Hackers found a way to enter any user’s account by simply modifying a numerical value that was in the URL generated by Hotmail. These attacks were made in the month of August 2000, and many users were affected directly or indirectly with these attacks.
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