Microsoft’s Outlook.com could be winner

Microsoft’s new email service Outlook.com looks good, modern, uncluttered and will no doubt confine sister-service Hotmail to the rubbish heap, where it belongs.

Hotmail, over 15 –years-old and left to rot for the last eight amidst a super-fast digital industry in which more nimble and contemporary looking emails such as Gmail trumped it, needed ditching and Microsoft knew it.
The most impressive thing about Outlook.com perhaps is the simplicity of upgrading from Hotmail, literally one click, free of  the usual mind-fug of questions and proof of identity.
While, for now, Microsoft will continue to run both email services, it won’t be long before Microsoft kills off Hotmail.
Outlook.com has already signed up over 1million users in a matter of days, which is pretty impressive as switching email accounts is not something users to my mind are wont to do.
But when it’s as simple as Microsoft has made it, then I guess punters will do it.
The big question for Microsoft is will it be able to lure across Google Gmail and Yahoo mail users?

Why would users switch?
Or why, when people are perpetually trying to order and simplifier their media intake, would they require an additional email service? Surely it would be just an unnecessary complication.
One possible answer could be that Outlook.com, unlike Gmail, will not show ads in users personal conversations.

Likewise, unlike Google, it will not connect you to a social network without you approving.
Such differences, particularly to the lay person, are unlikely to prompt an en-masse switch to Outllook.com.
More significantly, Oulook.com, which offers users Skype integration to users, will be fully integrated into Microsoft’s highly-anticipated Windows 8 operating system when introduced later this year.
Windows 8 is Microsoft’s big launch of the year- it will be an operating system which will try and rival Apple and Google ecosystems.  And it is likely that those who are swayed by Microsoft’s operating system are also likely to be swayed by Outlook.com