Hotmail opens email from other wemail accounts

Windows Live Hotmail is to allow users the freedom to read and send emails from other webmail accounts via their Hotmail client.

Hotmail's group program manager Dick Craddock wrote on the Inside Windows Live blog that this functionality has long been available in the Outlook software client, but not on the web. Craddock notes that more than 30 million Hotmail registrations have taken place where users provided another service's email address. These will now show up as an account that can be accessed within the Hotmail web client.

Once a user has set up their outside account within Hotmail, they can read and search through messages, as well as respond to them from that address. The feature uses POP, meaning that unlike Imap — which may or may not be available through the other email provider — whatever changes are made in Hotmail do not impact on settings back in the source account.

For more on this story, read Hotmail now works with other e-mail accounts, even Gmail on CNET News.