hotmail

Creating
an email id is no herculean task for us today. But, there was a time,
when the world was a different place, and one could only access the
inbox through only one’s personal computer. How tedious would that
have been! Today, we are accustomed to so much luxury and
technological freedom that we can access our emails from any system
and from anywhere in the world. All thanks to Sabeer Bhatia and Jack
Smith, the founders of the one and only Hotmail!

Ever since its launch in 1996, the concept has been accepted with open hands by the public, as it was able to satisfy one of the major needs of the common man. Hotmail is considered as one of the very first of the webmail services, which later, went on to be absorbed by Microsoft. Hotmail is now most popularly known as Outlook.com, as it has been revamped and launched by Microsoft again in 2017.

It all started with a normal conversation between two colleagues at the Apple office of San Francisco. Sabeer Bhatia was getting tired of the mundane tasks and routine work that he had to do at Apple. It was at the same time when their manager left the firm to work for a startup, named Power Systems in Silicon Valley. Both Sabeer and Jack followed him, and soon, joined the startup.

It
was during this phase of their journey that Bhatia created a
browser-based email. This million-dollar idea changed the course of
things on the internet and was able to create a wave of changes in
how people accessed their mails. The inception of the idea was when
Bhatia found it difficult to send emails to his colleagues because of
the firewall. This posed as a major hindrance for a large group of
office going individuals and other technology users of the mid to
late ’90s.

Sabeer
was so confident of his idea that he asked Jack Smith to leave his
job and start working with him full time. They soon pitched the idea
to Venture Capitalists and asked them for 3 million dollars to fully
develop the vision. After a lot of negotiations and bargaining, a
total of 30,000 dollars they agreed upon. The venture capitalists
asked for a 30% share of the profit, but the duo only agreed for 15%
of the total profit or shares of their firm.

Within
six months, Bhatia was able to launch the product. The product was
such a huge success which even the founders had not anticipated. They
received 100 thousand subscribers within the first week of the
launch. The momentum was so high, such that the number of new
registrations went up to a thousand users per day. It was one of the
biggest entrepreneurial successes that the world had ever seen,
making a deep mark in the digital realm.

Even
then, they were asked to add more impressions, clickthroughs, and
other added displays. All of the latest additions gave the startup
more than one million dollars per month. Even this huge amount of
money was not enough to sustain the functioning properly. It was
during this time when rocket Mail (later came to be known as Yahoo)
partnered with the very own Hotmail. This partnership was not very
successful, and the two of them parted their ways very soon.

There
were many such developments in the field, created lots of
innovations, mergings and split-ups. One of the most remarkable of
the acquisitions worth mentioning was that of Hotmail by Microsoft.
The acquisition was for around 400 Million USD, making Sabeer Bhatia
one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the decade.

With over 65 million subscribers and counting, Hotmail can be considered as one of the most viral and highly accepted concepts ever launched. Now known as Outlook.com, Hotmail succeeded in eliminating one of the most frustrating issues faced by the internet users of the ’90s. This is the reason why there is still a large community of people who still have not converted to outlook.com from Hotmail.com. The version of MSN Hotmail, which was the name given immediately after the acquisition by Microsoft, was also a hit. Even then, the tidal wave that Hotmail created among the people is still very much remarkable.

Aparna

Aparna is an MBA who turned into a content writer totally by chance.She has written articles on various genres such as fashion, finance, real estate and cryptocurrency. She is also a part-time blogger and a voracious reader. She believes that you should be young and crazy to become old and wise. She reads to her hearts fullest, which is again, an exhilarating experience.