Hotmail is reborn as Windows Live Hotmail.

Those who have followed Pandia for a while, know that we believe that the next great information technology battle will take place online, in the shape of online software or online services.

At the present the backbone of personal computing is operating systems like Windows, Linux and Mac OS and software packages like Microsoft Office.

In the future much of the work will be done online, within you Web browser window. Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets may, eventually, become an Office killer.

Microsoft knows this, and it also knows that the company that manages to capture most registered and loyal users will be the winner. This is why online email is so important. Users signing up for and using your online email service is more likely to use the rest of your services, being that search or word processing.

Google’s Gmail now offer more than 2.5 GB of storage, while Yahoo! is beta-testing a pretty advanced drag and drop version of Yahoo! Mail. Microsoft has to be as good as them, which is why they have now dusted off the old Hotmail service.

Microsoft is already dominating the email software market with Outlook (in Vista Windows Mail). No wonder they are trying to recreate some of the Outlook feel online. The new Windows Live Hotmail includes, for instance, the possibility of dragging and dropping messages into folders.

Microsoft has also added new spam and fraud protection features in the online e-mail service, and increased storage space to 2 gigabytes.

If you are not totally prepared to move all of your email life online you can add your Windows Live Hotmail account to Microsoft Outlook Express 6 or Outlook and access messages there.

Microsoft is continuing its tactic of branding its online services as a continuation of its of it Windows software, hence the Windows Live name. However, this time they have realized that they may loose a lot of PR by abandoning a well known brand as Hotmail. This has lead to the hybrid name Windows Live Hotmail.

This is definitely not poetry, and we still believe Microsoft should have sticked to the MSN brand. Nevertheless, this is the way to go, if Microsoft wants people to become Microsoft users, rather than Hotmail users only.

Microsoft has an overview over other Windows Live services at the beta-test stage that includes a blog service, a Q&A, an alerts service, a video service, academic search and — of course — Windows Office Live.