I received an email from Windows Live Team today which says “Thanks for using Hotmail for 10+ years”.
Now, I believe, I’ve registered with them sometime around 1997 – I used to live in Russia and the whole Internet thing was perceived as some kind of extended version of Fidonet. These were the times when you actually had to call your provider’s access phone number with your modem. I still remember how weird it was – you can actually browse something that’s not on your computer! 8-() Not many people realized the possibilities of that right away and for the longest time it had a reputation of some kind of big nerdy game where people were spending time doing nobody knows what.
Now, 13 years later, it all sounds funny, but at that point in time it all felt weird – I guess you can vaguely describe it as “the future is now”.
Hotmail on the other hand, like many others was acquired by MS soon after that and that’s pretty much all that’s worth mentioning about them – just another start-up acquisition.
