Microsoft relaunches Hotmail as Outlook.com, works Skype tie-in
Microsoft is relaunching its free webmail service Hotmail as Outlook.com.
The company says Outlook.com has “a cleaner look, to fewer and less obtrusive ads, to new connections to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.”
Microsoft also promises Skype integration in the near future, which would close a feature gap with Google’s Gmail (Microsoft bought Skype for $US8.5 billion last year).
A contact’s Twitter, Google+ and Facebook status updates now appear beside their email messages in your inbox – a change from Google’s Gmail, which is focussed exclusively around integrating updates from the search giant’s own Google+.
Other tweaks include a one-click clean up option that deletes all but the most recent message from a person.
Outlook.com also features close integration with Microsoft’s SkyDrive service for storing photos and other files online.
The revamped service also supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for syncing with an Office Outlook account.
Users will have the option of keeping their Hotmail address or switching to a new Outlook.com address.
Microsoft says there are 323 million Hotmail users worldwide.
In its recent quartely financial report, the company said its online services division posted an operating loss of $US1.45 billion on revenue of $US2.1 billion.
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Comments and questions7
All I ever did with my hotmail.com address was use it to up to online services that I suspected would result in a spam blasting.
I wonder how many others of that 323 million were used for that?
The others were the bots that did said spam blasting.
I'm joking.
Of course.
But seriously, as a Gmail user (I switched when it had a jump in capacity), I'm enviously of Outlook.com's more progressive approach to competitors' social media feeds. The SkyDrive integration looks nice too.
Yes I like the idea of both of those too.
I do think this is just trading in on Outlooks good name. Lets face it, pretty much everyone in the corporate world uses Outlook (except for the poor sad b'stards still stuck using Lotus Notes) and it mostly just works.
Hotmail sux.
you are dum
I had a quick look yesterday to sign up for my prefered name. They still have a bit of work to do. Will stick with Gmail for now but have kept my options open going forward.
I signed up and I think this has merit. I will wait to fully switch from Gmail until they get some more bugs worked out. But MS can beat Google at the phone OS game, and in the process, gain a lot of the email business back. HOW can they do this? Seamless integration between MS phone and Outlook (locally) along with the option for Exchane too. THEN, they need to let users decide if they want Outlook to be the record of source or SkyDrive. (And let users change this setting later.) FINALLY, sync email, contacts, calendars AND NOTES between all three and let me have full access to everything from my phone even when I don't have an internet connection.
The MARKETING strategy will be to convince Android users to keep their Android phone only as GPS (since Gmaps and Navigation is still superior to MS's service), and then buy a Windows phone as an experiment. Give them 30 days to return it for a refund. Let them use their Gmail account to login with MS (don't require a MS email address). INTEGRATE SKYPE DEEPLY without being a jerk about it: meaning don't punish those Skype users who don't have an MS phone, but give the MS phone users such unbelievable Skype integration, that people will throw their money at MS in droves in order to test out how this works.
Man, I hope someone at MS reads this sometime.