I wonder if Microsoft actually likes running their free email service still. They wiped a ton of old Hotmail and Live.com emails some years ago (and then allowed new people to register those deleted names). I imagine they don't get much out of it anymore.
I wonder how many accounts on other services were then hijacked using "forgot my password" attacks.
UPDATE: After a bit of digging it looks like they started the username recycling policy in 2013, may have quietly stopped doing that in 2018 but formalized no longer doing that in 2021: https://web.archive.org/web/20230627104616/https://www.micro...
"Summary of changes to the Microsoft Services Agreement – June 15, 2021 [...] In the Outlook and Office Services sections, we’ve removed the Outlook.com section to clarify that an email address or username is not recycled into our system or assigned to another user."
It's wild to me they ever started doing this in the first place. And in 2013 no less, it isn't like the hijacking risk was some far off concept at that point.
It's certainly not free to run and maybe it doesn't really make sense for Microsoft to run Outlook.com anymore, except that it's an easy way to motivate people to having a Microsoft account.
Outlook.com certainly has to show up as an expense, one that Microsoft would like to reduce. When you look at what other providers charge for a single email account, it's hard to see Microsoft making money of Outlook.com. There's obviously something to be said for scale, but still, it must cost them something.
> it's an easy way to motivate people to having a Microsoft account.
Can you actually use a non-outlook account for windows? Or are you talking about a different kind of "ms account"?
>It's certainly not free to run and maybe it doesn't really make sense for Microsoft to run Outlook.com anymore, except that it's an easy way to motivate people to having a Microsoft account.
it also funnels people into using exchange for work. more like a "marketing expense".
They wiped all the emails from my 25 year old Hotmail account. Pretty weak. I refuse to use Microsoft products except if forced, and do my best to evangelize this position.
Most people will never pay for email service. Which leaves you Google, MS or god forbid your own ISP.