With Hotmail no longer 'hottest' email service in the town, Microsoft has launched Outlook.com, a new web mail service, to take on Google's extremely popular Gmail. The new email service comes with "virtually unlimited" storage and integrates Skype, the popular video chat service that Microsoft bought last year.
Just like other email services, Outlook.com too will serve advertisements to users. Though Microsoft is saying there would not be display advertisements. This seems to be in response to the complaints from people who use Hotmail, which serves banner advertisements.
Incidentally, Outlook is the name of the native email client that Microsoft has bundled with Windows operating software for years. Microsoft claims that Outlook is world's most used desktop email client.
Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live services, said that Outlook.com is available to users in preview form from today. "It offers the first major improvement to cloud mail in eight years," he said. "We think the time is right to re-imagine personal email, from the datacenter to the user experience."
Currently all Hotmail or Microsoft Live users can log into Outlook.com using their existing ids. Microsoft said that for now, Hotmail would continue to be available.
"Hotmail users can upgrade to Outlook.com and will get the new user experience but will continue to send/receive mail from their @hotmail.com address. Hotmail users that upgrade will use the same username/password to login; all their mail, contacts, and calendar items will still be available in the new user interface. Sometime in the future, we'll upgrade all Hotmail users to the new Outlook.com user interface," the company said.
Outlook.com has been designed using Microsoft's Metro users interface. "The fresh, clean user interface gets the clutter out of a user's way. The header has 60% fewer pixels and there are 30% more messages visible in inbox than the webmail most people are used to. And there are no display ads or large search boxes that take up extra space," said Jones.
Just like other email services, Outlook.com too will serve advertisements to users. Though Microsoft is saying there would not be display advertisements. This seems to be in response to the complaints from people who use Hotmail, which serves banner advertisements.
Incidentally, Outlook is the name of the native email client that Microsoft has bundled with Windows operating software for years. Microsoft claims that Outlook is world's most used desktop email client.
Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live services, said that Outlook.com is available to users in preview form from today. "It offers the first major improvement to cloud mail in eight years," he said. "We think the time is right to re-imagine personal email, from the datacenter to the user experience."
Currently all Hotmail or Microsoft Live users can log into Outlook.com using their existing ids. Microsoft said that for now, Hotmail would continue to be available.
"Hotmail users can upgrade to Outlook.com and will get the new user experience but will continue to send/receive mail from their @hotmail.com address. Hotmail users that upgrade will use the same username/password to login; all their mail, contacts, and calendar items will still be available in the new user interface. Sometime in the future, we'll upgrade all Hotmail users to the new Outlook.com user interface," the company said.
Outlook.com has been designed using Microsoft's Metro users interface. "The fresh, clean user interface gets the clutter out of a user's way. The header has 60% fewer pixels and there are 30% more messages visible in inbox than the webmail most people are used to. And there are no display ads or large search boxes that take up extra space," said Jones.
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