San Franciscon — Microsoft has finally understood that there is more to maintaining its lead over Gmail than turning over buckets of storage at Hotmail users. In its latest attempt to counter Google Microsoft is set to begin rolling out the latest improvements to its “Windows Live Hotmail” Web mail service, with an aim to reduce clutter and by delivering new online editing capabilities for Office documents, and more than two dozen other enhancements for business and home users.
In recent years, rivals Google and Yahoo have been leading ahead of the game when it comes to improving things like conversation views, mobile synchronization and other features. Today’s makeover to its Hotmail web email service, clamping the service to its Bing search engine — Microsoft is clearly targeting at Google’s success with its online Docs service by making a Web-based version of Office available from within Hotmail’s Web interface that allows use of widely used document formats such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
Chris Jones, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, addressing a press briefing at the company’s San Francisco, California offices on Monday. While giving a demonstration, explained that email has changed significantly, especially, thanks to social networking and the growth of photo sharing of links and that Hotmail had to go beyond more than simply replicating Google’s Gmail.
Microsoft’s renovated Hotmail is being announced Tuesday, just less than a week after the release of Microsoft Office 2010.
Chris Jones: Hotmail added features people expected…
The new version, which will be available to most users in July or August, aims to offer a better alternative to the standard attachment. “The moment you receive an Office document as an attachment in Hotmail — Word, Excel or PowerPoint — the latest release empowers users to open, view and modify those document types within the browser with no additional software to download,” said Dharmesh Mehta, director of product management for the company’s Windows Live business.
“This results from the seamless integration between Hotmail, SkyDrive Microsoft’s free online storage service and the Office Web Apps, so you can send, receive and work on a document with others.” The concept is that you would not ever need to leave your Hotmail inbox to fire up a separate browser or media player to view the items somebody has emailed you. Bing search results are embedded without showing the URL.
The company has also assured that Hotmail will bring a semblance of order to your inbox. A number of predefined filters will allow you to group emails according to the sender, while a dialogue box would enable you to delete all emails from a particular address – such as a newsletter spammer – and unsubscribe you from all their future emails. The method has several benefits, including averting issues related to file size limits that often make it hard to share videos, presentations, or large collections of photos. Recipients can then either download the files, or, in the case of photos, view an online slideshow.
Due mid summer, the latest release would let you embed Bing search results in emails along with the capability to view photos or videos from third-party services, such as Flickr, SmugMug, Hulu, and YouTube, all without having to leave Hotmail. The revamped Hotmail also adds a new “sweep” option that lets users easily divert mail from a particular sender into either a new folder or into the trash.
“This update I think is the most monumental one we have ever done,” Jones said. At a minimum, it is at least the biggest move for Microsoft since it completely revamped Hotmail four years ago.
Although Gmail has grown faster than Hotmail, but Hotmail continues to be the biggest email service with 360 million users, according to Microsoft, versus around 50 million for Gmail.
“We have spent the last couple of years adding features people expected like a really large inbox, like real important spam protection,” Jones said. “We know there are a whole lot of other things we really need to add that are valuable to customers and causing them to pick other providers instead of us.”
Users will be able to synchronize e-mail, calendar and contacts between their phone and the Web using Exchange ActiveSync, and download new mobile Hotmail apps. Microsoft said Hotmail mobile apps will be unveiled on “BlackBerry, Nokia and many other phones,” but did not mention the iPhone or Google’s Android platform.
Later this year, Microsoft also plans on introducing SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption for Hotmail, although the company has not decided whether it will be optional or not, Mehta said.
Have a sneak peek at how Hotmail has evolved since its earliest days:
Hotmail through the ages (here) and a look at the new Hotmail (here) and (here).