Redmond, Washington — In a surprising turn of events, software giant Microsoft is predicting that a new streamlined interface and a name change will improve its Web-based email fortunes, on Tuesday introduce a new, free Web-based e-mail portal by re-branding its age old Hotmail with a new moniker: Outlook.com, as it seeks to draw users from Google Inc.’s Gmail.
The new name Outlook.com, which was unleashed as a preview Tuesday, was chosen as a name people associate with email, and Hotmail probably will be terminated gradually in the next year, said Brian Hall, a general manager in Microsoft’s Windows group, in a statement.
Admittedly, the service is based on recent work the company has done under-wraps to greatly speed up and clean up its webmail offering, with class-leading tools for organizing and keeping email inboxes free not only of outright spam, but of all that borderline lower priority email. Also, Microsoft is calling it “modern e-mail designed for the next billion mailboxes.”
The new Outlook.com is abundantly bundled with free Office Web Apps — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — to let consumers view and edit attachments without leaving the inbox. Outlook.com also comes with SkyDrive, so if users are sending photos, documents, or other large files, they can now put them on SkyDrive and stop worrying about attachment limits.
“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,” said Chris Jones, a corporate vice president of Windows Live Experience Program Management at Microsoft.
The new platform will securely link-up with the leading social networks–Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn–allowing users to communicate with all of these through the single Outlook.com site. That includes Facebook Chat, and, soon, the industry-leading Skype video-calling service, which Microsoft recently acquired.
PCMag.com met with Chris Jones, corporate vice president of the Windows Business Group, last week for a walkthrough with the new mail service.
Beyond some other features, the service will also seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft services–unified Contacts, Calendar, and the SkyDrive cloud storage service. By releasing Outlook, Microsoft is trying to capitalize on the brand behind the most-used corporate e-mail service, sold as part of its Office suite.
While Hotmail is the world’s most popular Web-based e-mail provider, it has lost ground in the U.S. to Google and Yahoo! Inc. as well as other, newer methods of communication, such as social media. Hotmail had 324.2 million unique visitors in June, compared with 290.3 million for Yahoo Mail and 277.6 million for Gmail, according to comScore.
Microsoft stated on an official Twitter account that 1 million people already have signed up for the preview since it was released.
“E-mail is one of the only areas in technology that is gone eight years without a significant change — the last big move was the release of Gmail — and for us it is maybe been even longer than that since our last big change,” Hall said. “None of the social networks existed then, and the types of e-mail we get have changed.”
Another executive said, “Email remains a very personal experience. What happens in your mailbox are very intimate conversations,” Jones said. “We know that it is important for people to feel like they are in control of what information is used, their privacy, and how their email is connected with other services.”
Jones added, “Eighteen months ago, when we commenced our work for Windows 8, we realized that with work on Windows Phone [and] Office 2013, we would have to rethink our approach to the cloud services to deliver a new, modern email service.”
Jones described four essential objectives in designing Outlook.com: to take a different, modern approach to the user interface suited to mobile devices; to make it personal through connections to social networks; to make it smart and powerful in handling different types of email; and to put the user in control.
As for those users who are interested in getting email addresses with the @outlook.com domain can straightway head to Outlook.com to create a new mail account. Existing @hotmail, @live, and @msn account holders will be able to upgrade to the new webmail client while retaining their existing email addresses. Also, switchers will still receive mail sent to the old address, Microsoft said.
Nonetheless, Outlook.com also inherits recent releases of Hotmail’s mailbox viewing and cleaning tools, which enables you to organize newsletters, automatically moving them to folders. It also lets you view mail by categories such as contains documents, photos, social updates, or shipping notices, or you can add your own custom categories.
You can read more about the new service on the Outlook blog, or just view the videos below:
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{iframe width=”620″ height=”390″ align=”top”}http://www.youtube.com/embed/RnCu72G52bY{/iframe}