Hotmail Officially Dead

All 300 million-plus Hotmail accounts have been migrated to Outlook and Hotmail, once among the leaders of free email services, is officially dead now.

The newer, redesigned email system Outlook was launched last summer and debuted in February.

"Today, we're excited to announce that we've completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com," Dick Craddock, group program manager for Outlook.com, posted on the company's website Thursday. "Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to over 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar, and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync."

Users' Hotmail accounts will stay the same — people can continue emailing you at [your address]@hotmail.com — but the interface and experience no longer have anything to do with the Hotmail name.

Hotmail first launched in 1996 as HoTMaiL. Microsoft acquired the company a year later for nearly $400 million. It was then rebranded as MSN Hotmail. It was a rival of AOL and Yahoo, but all were eventually outpaced by Gmail.