Microsoft rolls out Outlook.com to replace Hotmail

Microsoft loves to rename its applications and services and even the untouchable email service Hotmail will soon become Outlook.com. Yesterday, Microsoft has launched a preview of Outlook.com. What's new in comparison with Hotmail? First, the interface, which (like in other new Microsoft systems) is adapted to finger-controlled tablets. Secondly, it's tightly integrated with SkyDrive. After registration user automatically gets 7 GB of storage. Document attached to coming messages can be viewed in the online Office Web Apps or photo viewer. Files that you want to send can be quickly uploaded to SkyDrive and sent as download links (by the way, GMail still doesn't provide this feature for some reason). The third new feature - is integration with Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, LinkedIn, which allows to automatically update the contact list and see the social profile of the user who sent you a message.



Microsoft believes that the main Outlook.com advantage over GMail are advanced spam protection (and they have a reason to tell this) and that Outlook.com doesn't read the text messages for displaying ads. Ads in Outlook.com are displayed not in messages, but on the list-views, and they are not personalized.

But the most interesting feature may appear in the end of the year - integration with Skype.

See also: Top 10 Email services