Microsoft is offering its customers more than 5GB of free storage space on its Windows Live Hotmail service. 

This is doubling Hotmail's previous storage capacity and nearly twice that of rival Google's Gmail offering. Gmail offers around 2.8 GB of free storage.

It is not clear why Microsoft is upping the stakes in this way, particularly as it has been recently accused of deleting attachments sent to its Hotmail accounts as a way of saving space.

More here.