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Hotmail Corp.
To lure more users to MSN, Microsoft bought Hotmail on the eve of New Year’s Day 1998 for an estimated $395 million. A leading Web-based provider of free electronic mail, Hotmail currently counts more than 10 million active subscribers, and is adding 70,000 per day. Now these millions must access their free e-mail through a Gates-owned Web site that steers them to MSN—a traffic boost that should allow MSN to boost its ad rates.
