Microsoft will do away with the stalwart of online personal e-mail, Hotmail.com.
Hotmail will now be replaced by Outlook.com, and Microsoft has released a preview of the new service. Outlook.com will be a personal e-mail service, offered in addition to the desktop application and business service. Microsoft is calling Outlook.com “modern e-mail designed for the nest billion mailboxes”.
In a post on the Outlook blog, Microsoft VP and head of its Windows Live business, Chris Jones, says: “We think the time is right to reimagine e-mail. We realised that we needed to take a bold step, break from the past and build you a brand new service from the ground up.”
Jones says Webmail was first introduced with HoTMaiL in 1996. “Back then, it was novel to have a personal e-mail address you could keep for life - one that was totally independent from your business or Internet service provider.
“Eight years later, Google introduced Gmail, which included 1GB of storage and inbox search. And while Gmail and other Webmail services like Hotmail have added some features since then, not much has fundamentally changed in Webmail over the last eight years - though yesterday's frustrations about the small size of inboxes are now things of the past.
According to Microsoft, the new service will tackle the problem of overloaded inboxes by automatically sorting incoming mail by contacts, newsletters, shipping updates and social updates.
Social integration
The new Outlook.com service also features deep social media integration and Jones says Microsoft saw an opportunity to improve e-mail by connecting it to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, and soon, Skype.
“In the Outlook.com inbox, your personal e-mail comes alive with photos of your friends, recent status updates and tweets that your friend has shared with you, the ability to chat and video call - all powered by an always up-to-date contact list that is connected to your social networks,” says Jones.
Jones adds that the service will include free Office Web Apps such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote, to allow for the viewing and editing of documents within Outlook.com. SkyDrive is also included in the service as a work-around for attachment limits.
Hold on to your Hotmail
Existing Hotmail users can upgrade to Outlook.com by selecting “upgrade” from their options menu. Such users will be able to retain their “@hotmail.com' e-mail addresses.
Microsoft adds that users of Gmail, Yahoo and other e-mail services can create a new Outlook.com account and set up their other e-mail to be forwarded to the new address, while also importing all contacts.
“This will let you use both services for now, but we think that over time, most people will prefer Outlook.com,” adds Jones.
Distancing itself from Google, Microsoft has also said its algorithms won't use the contents of personal e-mail messages to help target ads.
Recent statistics have shown that Hotmail's worldwide market share has been declining (by 4% over the last year) with 324 million registered users, in June. Gmail has, however, been growing rapidly (by 17%) and currently has an estimated 278 million users.
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