Introduction
Who owns Hotmail? The short answer is Microsoft. It has owned the service since December 1997. But the longer story how Hotmail was born, sold, renamed, and eventually retired is worth knowing, especially if you still have an @hotmail.com address and wonder what's actually happening with it.
Who Owns Hotmail Today?
Microsoft owns Hotmail. It acquired the service in December 1997 for a reported figure of around $400 million. Since then, the brand has changed names multiple times, but ownership never changed hands again. Today, what was once Hotmail operates entirely as Outlook.com still under Microsoft's control, still accessible using your old @hotmail.com login.
One thing worth clarifying upfront: some articles online claim Hotmail was sold to Yahoo or AOL. That is factually incorrect. Microsoft has been the sole owner since the 1997 acquisition. No subsequent sale occurred.
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Who Originally Founded Hotmail?
The Two Founders: Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith
Hotmail was founded by two engineers Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. Both were working in Silicon Valley in the mid-1990s when they came up with the idea for a web-based email service that didn't require an ISP account to access it.
Bhatia, an Indian-American entrepreneur, served as CEO. Smith handled the technical architecture. Their core idea was simple but genuinely novel at the time: let anyone check their email from any browser, anywhere in the world. No setup. No ISP dependency.
When and Why Hotmail Was Created (1995–1996)
The company was incorporated in 1995. The service launched publicly on July 4, 1996 a date chosen deliberately to symbolize independence from ISP-tied email. The name itself came from the letters HTML embedded in it: the original branding was styled "HoTMaiL" to emphasize the web technology behind it.
Growth was fast. Within 18 months of launch, Hotmail had accumulated over 8.5 million subscribers. That kind of traction, at that speed, caught Microsoft's attention quickly.
How It Was Funded Before the Microsoft Deal
Hotmail's early growth was backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. It was not self-funded, and it wasn't profitable in the traditional sense it was scaling on free accounts. The VC backing helped sustain operations until the Microsoft acquisition made the exit possible.
When Did Microsoft Buy Hotmail?
The Acquisition — December 1997
Microsoft completed the acquisition of Hotmail in December 1997. Both founders Bhatia and Smith became Microsoft employees as part of the deal. Smith later served as Director of Engineering at Microsoft, leading the Hotmail division before eventually departing to co-found other ventures.
Interestingly, the timing wasn't entirely smooth. Just before the acquisition closed, a significant incident had occurred where roughly 25% of Hotmail mailboxes lost email data. Microsoft proceeded with the purchase regardless.
What Microsoft Paid — and Why the Figure Is Described as 'Reported'
The acquisition price is consistently cited as approximately $400 million. However, this figure was never officially confirmed by either party as a precise number. It's described as "reported" or "estimated" across reliable sources including Wikipedia's Outlook.com article.
Some sources have printed figures ranging from $400 million to $500 million. The discrepancy likely reflects deal structure details stock components, earnouts, or other terms that weren't fully disclosed publicly. What's not disputed: it was a substantial acquisition for 1997, and one of the earliest major web property purchases by a legacy tech company.
Why Microsoft Wanted Hotmail
At the time, Microsoft was building out MSN its consumer internet platform and needed an email product that could compete with the web-first approach America Online was using. Hotmail gave them a ready-made, fast-growing user base with a web-accessible architecture.
It was also a strategic defensive move. Free webmail was clearly the direction the market was heading. Owning the market leader made more sense than trying to build a competing service from scratch.
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What Microsoft Did With Hotmail After the Acquisition
This is where things get a little confusing Hotmail went through several name changes over 16 years before the brand was retired entirely. Here's the timeline in plain terms.
MSN Hotmail (1997–2007)
After acquisition, Microsoft rebranded it as MSN Hotmail and folded it into the MSN family of services. The product continued to grow significantly by early 1999, it reported 30 million active users, making it the largest webmail service in the world at that point.
The infrastructure, though, was a point of friction. Hotmail originally ran on FreeBSD and Solaris not Microsoft's own systems. A project was started to migrate everything to Windows 2000.
Microsoft claimed in June 2001 that this migration was complete. Days later, they retracted the statement and admitted DNS functions were still running on FreeBSD. As late as 2002, significant parts of Hotmail's infrastructure remained on Unix servers.
Windows Live Hotmail (2007–2011)
In May 2007, Microsoft rebranded the service again as Windows Live Hotmail as part of its broader Windows Live suite a bundle of digital products tied to Windows. For most users, the experience didn't change dramatically. It was the same email service, new name on the door.
Back to Hotmail (2011–2013)
In October 2011, Microsoft dropped the "Windows Live" prefix and returned to simply calling it Hotmail. This was a short-lived reversal. By this point, Microsoft was already developing what would replace it.
The Transition to Outlook.com (2013–Present)
In May 2013, Microsoft fully retired the Hotmail brand and replaced it with Outlook.com. All existing accounts including those with @hotmail.com addresses were migrated automatically. The Hotmail.com domain now redirects to outlook.live.com.
At the time of migration, there were over 300 million Hotmail accounts. That's a large-scale rebrand by any measure.
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Does Hotmail Still Exist Today?
The Hotmail Brand Was Retired in 2013
As a standalone brand, Hotmail no longer exists. The website is gone. The name isn't used in any current Microsoft product. What replaced it is Outlook.com which is a different product name but the same underlying email service, now with a significantly updated interface, storage capacity, and security features.
What Happened to Existing @hotmail.com Accounts
If you had a @hotmail.com address, it still works. Microsoft did not delete or invalidate old Hotmail addresses during the migration to Outlook. Your email address remains valid. Emails sent to @hotmail.com still arrive. The address itself is preserved indefinitely as part of Microsoft's account system.
What changed is where and how you access it. The Hotmail.com login page no longer exists. You now sign in at Outlook.com using the same @hotmail.com address and password.
How to Access a Hotmail Account Now
Go to Outlook.com. Enter your @hotmail.com email address. Enter your password. That's it. You're in. The interface is Outlook, but your emails, contacts, and account settings from Hotmail are all there. You can also access it through the Outlook mobile app on iOS or Android, or through IMAP and POP protocols in a third-party email client.
If you want to update your address to @outlook.com, that option is available inside account settings but it isn't required. Many people have kept their @hotmail.com addresses for decades, and there's no indication Microsoft intends to phase them out.
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Conclusion
Microsoft owns Hotmail and has since 1997. The brand was retired in 2013 and replaced by Outlook.com, but the accounts, addresses, and infrastructure carried over. If you're a longtime Hotmail user, your account is still there. Nothing was lost. Just renamed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Hotmail owned by Google?
No. Hotmail has never been owned by Google. It is owned by Microsoft. Google operates Gmail, which is a separate and competing email service. The two have no ownership overlap.
Did Microsoft sell Hotmail to Yahoo or AOL?
No. This claim appears in some online articles and is incorrect. Microsoft acquired Hotmail in 1997 and has retained ownership ever since. It was never sold to Yahoo, AOL, or any other company.
Is Hotmail the same as Outlook?
Effectively, yes. Outlook.com is the current version of what was Hotmail. Same ownership, same underlying service, same accounts just rebranded in 2013. The @hotmail.com addresses still work through the Outlook.com platform.
Can I still use my @hotmail.com email address?
Yes. Old @hotmail.com addresses remain active. You sign in through Outlook.com rather than Hotmail.com, but your address, inbox, and account data are still intact. No action is needed unless you choose to update your address.
Who owns the @hotmail.com domain?
Microsoft owns and operates the hotmail.com domain. It redirects to Outlook.com. Emails sent to @hotmail.com addresses are handled by Microsoft's servers, the same infrastructure that powers Outlook.com.
