Hotmail is reborn as Windows Live Hotmail.

Those who have followed Pandia for a while, know that we believe that the next great information technology battle will take place online, in the shape of online software or online services.

At the present the backbone of personal computing is operating systems like Windows, Linux and Mac OS and software packages like Microsoft Office.

In the future much of the work will be done online, within you Web browser window. Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets may, eventually, become an Office killer.

Microsoft knows this, and it also knows that the company that manages to capture most registered and loyal users will be the winner. This is why online email is so important. Users signing up for and using your online email service is more likely to use the rest of your services, being that search or word processing.

Google’s Gmail now offer more than 2.5 GB of storage, while Yahoo! is beta-testing a pretty advanced drag and drop version of Yahoo! Mail. Microsoft has to be as good as them, which is why they have now dusted off the old Hotmail service.

(more…)