Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. This includes a webmail interface featuring mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services. Outlook can also be accessed via email clients using the IMAP or POP protocols.
Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith as Hotmail, it was acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for an estimated $400 million, with it becoming part of the MSN family of online services, branded as MSN Hotmail. In May 2007, the service was rebranded to Windows Live Hotmail, as part of the Windows Live suite of products. It was changed back to Hotmail in October 2011 and was fully replaced by Outlook in May 2013, sharing the same brand as the Microsoft Outlook software which is offered via a Microsoft 365 (formerly Microsoft Office) subscription.
Outlook is offered with any Microsoft account, using @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @msn.com, as well as @live.com and @passport.com domains. The @live.com and @passport.com domains, as well as various other domains are no longer offered.