NEW HOTMAIL TOO

Like the post below, if they integrate Inner Circle functions from Lili's group at Microsoft Research, I'm taking credit for that too :) Excerpt from a CNET article:

"The Hotmail service has kind of lagged behind some of the others," Radicati said. By being early to the market with a free service, Hotmail for years found it easy to sign up more and more users. "Probably, they became a little bit complacent."

Even those inside the company generally agree that the launch of Gmail was a giant wake-up call.

"When Gmail came, it basically raised the bar on expectations and also capabilities of what is a modern Web browser application," said Richard Craddock, the development manager for Windows Live Mail, which is set for launch later this year.

Microsoft had been kicking around ideas on how to revamp Hotmail since at least 2002, but the ideas stayed on the drawing board until Gmail came around.

"It became very clear...this is what we should be doing,'" Craddock said. "Somewhere along the way, we realized there was probably a lot more money in this free e-mail service than we recognized before." (full article)