MSN Launches Hotmail Plus - 2GB of storage
Microsoft launched its MSN Hotmail Plus subscription service in 30 markets worldwide today. The upgraded service, as announced in June, offers subscribers, for $19.95 a year in the US, 2GB of storage, the ability to send 20MB attachments, no account expiration, and no graphical advertising. Company representatives say that this service is geared toward customers who want to get more out of their free web-based Hotmail account which now includes anti-virus scanning and cleaning. Although the free scanning and cleaning provided by Network Associates' McAfee went live on July 8th, the additional 250MB of storage for free accounts has no specific release date set. In the wake of Yahoo Mail's recent upgrades and Google's looming GMail (still in beta), Microsoft now plans to improve its own Web-based e-mail service by sometime later this summer. The company says that as part of an effort to improve the customer experience, it plans to enhance the free e-mail Hotmail service with 250MB of storage per user, up from a relatively meager 2MB, and upgrade virus protection and cleaning.
