<p>I remember the giddiness of being freed from the yoke of a paid AOL membership, ready to choose my very own email address instead of the one my dad had set up. I probably searched AltaVista or asked Jeeves before finding I could set up a free account at Hotmail.com. It was a heady feeling, one of liberation and unbounded email opportunities. Fast forward to the present, when those still faithful to Hotmail are no doubt mourning its impending demise.</p><p>Nowadays it's a source of comedic joy to giggle at a friend who doesn't have a Gmail account, or a guy who gives you his email ending with "@hotmail.com" ("Really? Please!). In order to compete in that more Hotmail-deriding world, Microsoft has released Outlook.com to the general public in a move that will shift its email services away from Hotmail.</p><p>Users with a Hotmail account will still be able use those addresses, but they'll be accessed through Outlook's cloud, notes the Los Angeles Times. Microsoft had a hard think about this move before unveiling it, say company executives.</p><p>"It's not a light brand decision," said Dharmesh Mehta, senior director of product management for Outlook.com and SkyDrive. "I don't know of any other company that has hundreds of thousands of users and has changed the brand name. But this is something new, an opportunity to set us up for the future."</p><p><a href="http://consumerist.com/2013/02/19/hotmail-going-the-way-of-the-dinosaur-as-microsoft-opens-outlook-to-the-public/">Keep reading...</a></p>