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Maybe Microsoft has learned something over time. When Microsoft first bought hotmail, all the front end servers were running on FreeBSD, and the backend servers were running Solaris. The first thing they tried to do was convert everything to Win2K to show the world it could be done. Didn't start out so great and they learned that somethings were best left alone (even though they eventually pushed them all through to show that it could be done**). Now they have another chance with another high-value web property and they decided to be learn from their own experience (since they don't have the goal to make this a showcase).

**Here's an (admittedly somewhat biased account) of what they did. http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html

Could very well be, but then what of the following, taken from David Brooks' writeup describing the HotMail conversion (emphasis added)

The conversion of the Hotmail web servers to Windows is an ongoing project with several rationales. The team was hoping for better utilization of the existing hardware resources. The superior development and internationalization tools are important. A Microsoft property should eat its own dogfood. Finally, we wished to use the conversion experience as a model for other UNIX conversions that we hope to carry out in the future.

Source: http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html

The word, however, wasn't the point in referencing the post. The intended take-away was Microsoft's prior dodgy track record when doing infrastructure swap-outs on some of their newly-acquired products, swap-outs driven by factors which clearly included strong doses of NotInventedHere.

Given the background and consequence similarities between this and past episodes like HotMail, its a valid line of speculation with some historical precedent. Not that it will ever be anything more than speculation, of course.

Here's the paper covering the migration of hotmail over to Windows 2000.

Interesting reading if you have the time for it.

You forgot the word "competent" in there somewhere. Not saying that windows people are incompetent, but, here, let Microsoft speak for itself:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/ms_paper_touts_unix/
http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html

You could look at this summary http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/ms_paper_touts_unix/ or the actual Whitepaper http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html.

MS wanted to remove the stain of running Hotmail on BSD. It took them years to do it. They were not able to throw enough money at the problem to get Windows to run on a stripped down kernel. As a point of pride MS wanted to get this done and even then, they had to admit at NT back in 99 was to complex for them to strip it down to a 10meg mini system. Or even a 50 meg mini system.

Sure you could have built Google on top of a MS OS but you would lose four things.

1. Hardware Costs, you would have to purchase more hardware because each computer does less, having to carry the weight of a "heavy" Microsoft OS.
2. OS Costs, you to pay for all of those copies of Windows and whatever licenses for connections to web servers and database backends
3. Scalability, the microsoft software you would be building on is not designed to cluster or scale at this level. You would be writing custom tools for it. While that technology is already available in the *nix world for that.
4. Customizations, they run their own database and file systems, which they were able to customize at the OS level. As an MS partner they may be able to access to look at the source code for windows. But they would not have been able to custom compile a system to their liking.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Microsoft migrated Hotmail to Windows 2000. See this White Paper on the subject.

Probably because they wanted something that was designed better than unix (even calling unix "designed" in the first place is being fairly generous).

Maybe they wanted something better designed then unix, but they didn't get it! (calling windows 'designed' in the first place is being fairly generous)

The only way Windows is becoming more like unix, is if your worldview starts and ends at Windows and unix. If anything, unix is becoming more like Windows.

Errr right, I suggest you read this Microsoft whitepaper written in 2000. It points out a lot of problems with win2k found during the unix -> windows migration for hotmail. Many of the reccomendations are basically "make it more unix like" and many of them have been implemented in the time since.

In other words - you have no idea what you're talking about.

if FreeBSD is so great, why don't they still use it?

It took them at least two cuts at it, as I recall. The first time went rather badly, with delays and even brief outages. The second time they made it.

There was an interesting white paper, originally meant for internal consumption but later leaked (I have a vague recollection that it ended up in a public ftp directory by mistake) that described some of the issues involved. I read it back then and found it a pretty balanced work (perhaps why it had to be leaked.) Their offical public paper is also available.

It's worth noting that Hotmail worked just fine with a FreeBSD front end (the back end was a combination of NT SQL boxes and various Sun systems providing files services and handling incoming mail.) I'm not entirely clear just how much of the site is Windows even now -- they explicitily describe switching over the web servers, but don't really get into the back-end machines -- but I'm sure they're working on it if it isn't. It's a good showcase for them, after all.

Microsoft dont do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. They are a corporate entity with a fiscal responsibility to their shareholders.

He will be brought on board to continue the MS strategy of embrace, extend (in a proprietary fashion) then replace. MS do not want to support linux in any way, they want to kill it. Dead. Every linux box sold represents money ripped from their pocket.

My guess is that this could be something like:
- get linux to run well on MS virtual machines, so linux can become just an app running under 2k3, and therefore slowely sink into oblivion.
- work on their command line tools. Looks like they have finally realised that the {Li,U}n{u,i}x way of providing powerful command line utilities is actually pretty useful (perhaps learned from the struggle when they first tried to convert hotmail to NT :-).

Interesting times ahead.

Yes, you are correct. The attempt to move HotMail off of BSD was not an easy move. However, HotMail now runs on Windows 2000.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/ case/hotmail/default.mspx

And a summary with less marketing-speak:
http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.ht ml

For the curious, there was a fascinating leaked whitepaper on the conversion, dated August 2000, by an [ex-?] Microsoft engineer named David Brooks. It's very good reading, if you have the time and want to understand a bit better how Microsoft is approaching their effort to evangelize their software over Unix.

Hotmail still has *nix at it's base, so it's still up.....

No
It
Doesn't.

The site www.hotmail.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.

The primary advantage that OSS has is primarily cost and the fuzzy feel-good mission of it. But they are pragmatists, so if the world wants MSFT, then they will oblige, especially if MSFT can make concessions.

However, well placed bribes and such can cause key individuals to overcome their sense of what is best.

What a lot of people forget is that Microsoft is a marketing company, not a software company. Network infrastructure is, and has been, largely OSS / Free Software.

Nobody "stole private documents", hacked the server or anything like that. Best of all, it's Microsofts own marketing droids who posted these documents.

See this Wired article