In the past few years a lot of people have started using Gmail. Now it seems Hotmail is making a comeback.

Hotmail, the email service from Microsoft, was chosen by PC Magazine as the web app of the year. No, you aren’t in 2003. It’s Windows Live Hotmail 2011 we are talking about, and Microsoft’s product seems to be a hit again.

In the last years Hotmail has become synonymous with an outdated electronic service, something that only the old and out of touch still use.  Well, tell your grandpa that he doesn’t need to change to Gmail: according to PC Magazine, Microsoft’s staff has updated Hotmail, making it better and as modern as any of its competitors. 

Released by Google in 2004, Gmail probably helped to make Hotmail antiquated to so many. At that time, Gmail offered higher storage capacity and it was faster than its competitors. Chris Jones, the Windows Live corporate vice president, admitted this year that many problems such as storage capacity had corrupted the Hotmail brand.

The worst problem of all was the spam filters: no-one likes to login in to an email account just to find hundreds of newsletters and offers. According to Microsoft, 50% percent of inboxes from all Hotmail users are filled with spam.  Today we also have the social media newsletters. Facebook and Twitter represent 17% of all messages sent to Hotmail inboxes, said Jones. He also informed that nowadays communication between people represents only 14% of all messages sent by email. If you don’t want to be buried in a mountain of electronic garbage every time you check your inbox, you  need a service provider with a good spam filter, right? Hotmail didn’t had this… until now. Windows Live Hotmail 2011 allows users to separate undesirable messages, putting them automatically in a specific folder or deleting them.

This is only one of the new features that make Hotmail 2011 different from its older versions. Other interesting tools include the scheduled inbox cleanup and the new flagging system, which puts some messages at the top of the inbox. The integration with MSN Windows Live Messenger, the largest instant messaging service worldwide, keeps Hotmail attractive.

According to the internet marketing research company, comScore, Windows Live Hotmail has the first place on the podium of the world’s largest email services competition. Microsoft product has 364 million users. 280 million use Yahoo! Mail and 260 prefer Gmail. Despite these numbers, Hotmail has a poor public perception, even Microsoft admits it. The company’s hope is that the new Hotmail 2011 will overtake this challenge. And at least to PC Magazine, this mission is accomplished.

Of course it’s difficult to say which email service is better.  It all depends of the user’s opinion.  Maybe everybody should login again to those old Hotmail accounts to check what Microsoft has been doing recently. Maybe your grandpa is right.  Or, perhaps PC Magazine is wrong this time…