Messenger hotmail

You're referring to the early days of email!

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hotmail was one of the most popular free web-based email services. It was founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, and it quickly gained popularity due to its ease of use and free service.

In 1997, Microsoft acquired Hotmail for $400 million, and it became a subsidiary of the company. At its peak, Hotmail had over 100 million users worldwide.

In 2012, Microsoft announced that it would be retiring the Hotmail brand and replacing it with Outlook.com, a new web-based email service that would offer more features and a more modern design. The transition was completed in 2013, and Hotmail was officially rebranded as Outlook.com.

Today, Outlook.com is still a popular email service, and it offers many features such as calendar integration, contact management, and integration with other Microsoft services like Office Online and OneDrive.

As for the Messenger service, it was a popular instant messaging platform that was also acquired by Microsoft in 1998. It was initially developed by a company called NuMega, and it was later rebranded as MSN Messenger. In 2013, Microsoft announced that it would be retiring MSN Messenger and replacing it with Skype, a video conferencing platform that it had acquired in 2011. The transition was completed in 2014, and MSN Messenger was officially shut down.

So, to summarize, Hotmail was a popular free web-based email service that was acquired by Microsoft in 1997 and later rebranded as Outlook.com. MSN Messenger was a popular instant messaging platform that was also acquired by Microsoft and later replaced by Skype.