Microsoft Outlook.com revamps Hotmail

Although most of the features currently available are already in Hotmail, Outlook.com will add Skype “soon”, Microsoft said, and also makes it easier to filter out the email messages that are newsletters or circulars that users have signed up for but are not personalised. This so-called “grey mail” accounts for an increasing part of typical inboxes and is regarded as a growing problem.

He added that “email is becoming less and less useful as inboxes become cluttered with newsletters and social updates, and people increasingly keep up their personal connections in social networks instead of their email address books. All of this has led many to hope for a better solution so you don't have to settle for today's webmail”.

Microsoft is hoping that users who are already familiar with the popular Outlook programme and web application will be keen to use a cleaner looking interface than those used by Google and Yahoo. In a calculated dig at Google’s Gmail business model and use of the Google+ social network, Jones’s blog post adds “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. We let you decide whether to connect your account to social networks, and which ones you want to use”. Google uses email content to present users with more relevant adverts.

Users who choose to connect Outlook.com to Facebook will see more information about their contacts via the social network, in which Microsoft holds shares, and will be able to use other Microsoft web apps to access documents form Word, Powerpoint and Excel. Microsoft is also making the new interface available for touch devices based on Android, Windows Phone and iOS. Existing Hotmail can click “upgrade” to change to the new Outlook interface.