Hotmail® is officially changing their name to Windows Live™ Hotmail®. This updates includes 5 GB of free space (where Gmail is giving away 2.8 GB space and Yahoo! is offering unlimited space for email storage), updated design and enhanced security features.

The name change news of Hotmail to Windows Live Hotmail is not very recent but a continuous update of Hotmail features made me write about it in my blog. Microsoft is also adding the term “Windows Live” to all of their services like MSN search (now Windows Live Search), MSN messenger (now Windows Live Messenger) and so on.

Web based email was always a very competitive market. Large companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are always trying to enhance their features like size of email storage, attachment size and appearance to stay in the competition. Even though i am not in charge of marketing for any of those company, i can feel the raising pressure to acquire larger email market by these companies marketing executives.

Few days ago Windows Live Hotmail changed their top navigation bar. The appearance is very similar to Microsoft’s latest operation system Windows Vista’s taskbar. This latest Hotmail navigation bar consists of 2 new buttons; Spaces (major competitors are MySpace and Blogspot) and OneCare (Microsoft’s another leading online security related service that is competing with Symantec and McAfee).

Here Microsoft is not only trying to enhance their web email system of a purpose to attract new users but also trying to promote their product or service among existing free Hotmail users. In a recent press release by Symantec(creator of popular Norton Security System) CEO, John Thompson, Symantec accused Microsoft for monopolistic price of OneCare which added pressure for deciding price of Norton products.

By the way, if you are using basic Hotmail account, you can easily upgrade your account to Windows Live Hotmail with a click of a button. Visit www.hotmail.com for detail information.