"You knew if you had a Compuserve address you were not cool and Hotmail was threatening to go in that direction." "Google became the cool email place and Hotmail became Compuserve," Mann said, a reference to the stuffy internet service provider that cornered the early US commercial internet. However, despite buying Hotmail in 1997 – a year after it launched – Microsoft is still best known for its relatively unsexy Windows operating system and suite of Office products. When it launched Gmail, Google was already known to millions as the window to the entire internet through its ubiquitous search engine. "Hotmail was one of the first to gain a lot of the early users and then Google came along and captured a lot of its cool factor." "Certainly Hotmail has been stagnating," said Jeff Mann, the vice-president of research at analysts' firm Gartner. Hotmail, it seemed, had become a place for teenagers who preferred to spend more time using MSN Messenger than lengthy emails. It had the added bonus of being a cleaner inbox with a more professional-looking email address. Size matters, and Google offered more space for chunky messages. Like many, I suspect, I ditched Hotmail in around 2007 for Gmail. The move is designed to unify Microsoft's range of software products, such as Windows Phone and Office, and entice a new generation of Facebook-addicted users who want to see status updates alongside emails.
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