The beginning of this year began with clean inboxes for numerous users of Hotmail. According to some rumors it was due to the downside in the cloud.

Thousands of people lost their e-mails, 17 thousand, in particular. It happened on New Year’s weekend. People began informing about suspicious lack of messages first. Users could not find as well their incoming messages which were stored in the course of the whole decade. They were also reports from users who received the welcoming message from Microsoft, the one which is usually received after the account creation.

Microsoft support forums were piled with questions from Hotmail users. All worried why messages vanished suddenly. The reaction of the company followed 48 hours later and Chris Jones, the vice president of Windows Live posted in the blog and acknowledged the problem. He also asserted that the problem was solved. The reason was explained too. He stated that it happened due to “mailbox load balancing between servers.” Chris Jones promised to study the problem thoroughly and take measures to avoid the repetition of the same thing in the future. The company in his face excused for the inconvenience it caused.

It is worth saying that there are 360 million of Hotmail users and that makes the service famous all over the world. As the competition from Google Gmail is getting more serious from year to year, the company enhanced its look and redesigned it in summer. It also introduced new features that refer to improved integration with photo attachments and video files.