Hotmail to be replaced by “Kahuna”

More than 200 million Hotmail users may be in for a surprise if, as expected, the creaking web-based email service is replaced by Microsoft some time next year.

For the past seven months, MSN has been beta-testing Kahuna, a radically new webmail client closer in functionality to the Outlook experience. Clearly stung by the success of Google’s Gmail, Microsoft has pulled out the stops, including a complete rebuilding of features with AJAX, a technology that eliminates page refreshes when items are updated.

Today the beta program will be expanded to 200,000 users prior to full roll out next year.

PC Mag reports : “The virus, phish detection and spam management tools will be housed in a new ‘InfoBar’, and the Calendar has a more Outlook-like feel. Microsoft has also made a more powerful Contacts area, simplified new contact management and added auto-recipient complete (for when you have matching contacts in your contact database) for new e-mail. Mail creation has also been enhanced, with Rich Text Editing features. Baseline storage space for the free service will be 2GB.”