Microsoft Completes Rollout Of Hotmail Extra Storage

TechWeb News confirms that Microsoft has completed its rollout of 250 megabyte Hotmail free accounts. I got my 2 gigabyte MSN account yesterday, and couldn't be happier. Here's something interesting you may not know:

As of Thursday, new Hotmail customers in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the U.K. receive 25MB of storage when they register. Thirty days later, the allowance is automatically upgraded to 250MB.

"We created a storage waiting period to ensure that new accounts are used by qualified customers and are not being generated by spammers or malicious users," said Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president for MSN, in a statement.

I can't say I disagree with the policy. Spam needs to be fought any way possible, and it's not like anyone will run out of 25 megabytes in just a few weeks.