Hotmail improvements on the way

by Victor Agreda, Jr. Jul 13th 2005

BetaNews reports Microsoft is crunching away on some major renovations in the house of Hotmail. What's new? A cleaner interface, possible integration with Spaces, and automatic inbox refreshing, ala Gmail. Big screenshot here.

Obviously MS is under pressure from Google and Yahoo. As a service, it's been around nearly 10 years. There have been some touchups, even an increase in mailbox size, but what's really changed? People point to spam being worse, but I've got a hotmail account that has NEVER had spam, because I never use it for anything but private, personal emailing.

I still find it interesting that Hotmail doesn't "do more." Microsoft has an amazing potential to leverage their vast empire in the email space. But this begs the question: why bother? So many folks are blogging, IM'ing, using SMS or about a hundred other tools– is there really anything new to offer? I guess we'll know soon.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Joe said 9:43AM on 7-14-2005

Ever notice how MSN's shopping partners (Bloomingdales, Target, and others) NEVER get filterd by their junk mail no matter how many times you manually identify them as junk.

Until they find a better way to let their partners SPAM you, hotmail will simply remain my junk "sign up" account.

Marco said 2:47PM on 7-14-2005

Strange 'Lisa' is on-line on the hotmail page but off-line in the messenger window. Perhaps a photoshop trick?

Jordan Running said 3:33PM on 7-14-2005

Over on Digg they're arguing about the legitimacy of that screenshot. Some are saying that it's a Photoshop mock-up that's been floating around the web for a few years. The Amazon ad at the top (selling 2003's Order of the Phoenix) seems fishy.

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