Microsoft is a giant (so many different countries, languages, regions, command chain, etc) and they are the kings of backwards compatibility - so a lot of shims and other things to make Hotmail work for slow internet, older version of iE (think IE7 or less) and etc.<p>That&#x27;s my guess anyways.<p>Also, maybe Hotmail hits some servers that are not as fast as Google&#x27;s or Amazon&#x27;s. So that may be another reason why Hotmail&#x2F;Office products are &quot;slow&quot;.