Like a vestige of a bygone era, my Hotmail email address still exists and works, even if the domain resolves to Microsoft's far less sexy Outlook online mail system. The continued utility of my Hotmail email address is a reminder that, 30 years after its launch, Hotmail played a valuable role in the early days of the Internet, even if its current existence is ephemeral at best.
It's easy to forget that Hotmail, which was founded by a former Apple Engineer, Sabeer Bhatia, and FirePower Systems engineer, Jack Smith, was the first free online email provider and was something of a sensation (the name was then quite apt). Also lost to history is its somewhat peripatetic journey from a platform used by millions (at its height around 130M) to a service that was deplatformed, derided, revived, and eventually abandoned.
