Hotmail Officially Dead, Make Way For Microsoft Outlook to Replace Popular 1990s Email Service

Hotmail?  Don't you mean NOTmail?

Hotmail, on of the most popular e-mail services in the '90s, is officially gone after 16 years of fighting big competition from services like Yahoo and Gmail.

This week, Microsoft announced tat the service is officially gone and has rolled into their new Outlook.com service, according to WebProNews.

According to WebProNews, Dick Craddock, Group Program Manager at Outlook.com Group, posted on the Outlook Blog on Thursday writing:

"We want to give a huge 'Thank you' to all of you who have supported Hotmail over the years, for some of you, that's going back as far as 1996. It has been an amazing journey and we've been honored to provide you with a great mail experience for many years. When we launched the original preview of Outlook.com, we knew that we were committing to building the world's best email with a brand and product experience that spans from consumers all the way to the largest organizations. We're excited to have you join Outlook.com as we write the next chapter in modern email from Microsoft."

Outlook now claims over 400 million active accounts, 125 million of which are accessed from mobile devices, according to Vibe.com.  It took six weeks for Microsoft to migrate the 150 petabytes of Hotmail e-mail accounts to Outlook.  In the meantime, they were able allow users to maintain contacts and preferences, WebProNews reports.

Ex-Hotmail users will still be able to utilize their old e-mail addresses, however, they will have to access their inbox from the Outlook website, according to WebProNews.

Outlook.com also announced two new features that Hotmail users can take advantage of right away, according to Yahoo! Finance.  The first is the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, which is a popular device-friendly standard for receiving e-mail.  The second is deeper integration with SkyDrive, Microsoft's cloud storage solution.  This makes attaching files quicker by allowing files to be stored and sent directly from your SkyDrive rather than from your hard drive.

Old Hotmail, and now new Outlook users will be given the option to continue to use simple features like Inbox, Drafts, Sent, or Deleted, if they are not interested in the more technical aspects of Outlook, according to the Examiner.  Meanwhile, more advance users can get information on all-things Outlook on the Outlook Blog.

Some users have already started to notice a difference.  "I should whisper this, but I think the new Outlook format is loads better than Gmail," user Charlie Almond posted on Fast Company, according to NewsMax.