Microsoft is pulling the plug on Hotmail,
one of the early leaders in web-based email, and plans to transition
the service's more than 350 million users to a new email service
called Outlook.com, the software giant announced Tuesday.
The new service will, as its name suggests, tie in with the
Microsoft email program of the same name that is part of the
company's popular Office suite of business software.
Microsoft touted the new system as the biggest change in web-based
email since the introduction of Hotmail in 1996. Microsoft bought the
company a year later for an estimated 400 million dollars.
According to a blog posting by product manager Chris Jones,
Outlook.com combines contact information from emails and popular
social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and
Google Plus.
Featuring a minimalist design, the new service boasts powerful
tools for sorting emails, including automatic recognition of
newsletters, social media updates and junk mail that, according to
Jones, accounts for some 70 per cent of inbox content.
The service also automatically recognizes emails with photos,
documents or shipping information attached and sends these to
pre-selected folders.
While the free service is ad-supported, Microsoft said that unlike
Google's gmail service the ads will not be related to the content of
users' emails.
"We don't scan your email content or attachments and sell this
information to advertisers or any other company, and we don't show
ads in personal conversations," Jones said.
He said that Outlook.com was launched Tuesday in a preview period
and that eventually all Hotmail users would be switched to the new
service. No date was given for the transition.
