Microsoft announced today that Hotmail would undergo some major upgrades over the next several weeks that should make the service more attractive to webmail users. The most notable change is that the company is bumping the storage limit for Hotmail from 2GB (for free account users) to 5GB, and from 4GB to 10GB for paid users. This brings Hotmail's storage limit above that offered by Google—which remains at 2.8GB for free accounts and 8.8GB for the lowest tier of paid accounts.

That's not the only upgrade the webmail service is getting. Hotmail program manager Ellie Powers-Boyle wrote on the Windows Live Blog that the team has begun adding features that the "more advanced" users have been asking for. Some of the more general upgrades include performance and quality of service enhancements and an increase to the amount of time junk mail and deleted items are kept on the server.