Microsoft To Introduce Web-Based Outlook; Brian Hall Comments

Brian Hall

Microsoft Corp. will introduce a free and web-based email portal under the Outlook brand, Bloomberg reports.

Microsoft’s Windows group general manager Brian Hall said Hotmail will likely be phased out in the next year.

The web-based Outlook service will feature sorting of emails according to contacts, social media updates and newsletters.

Hotmail users also have the choice to keep or switch from their @hotmail.com addresses.

E-mail has gone eight years without significant change, Hall said, according to the report.

No of the social networks existed then and the types of e-mail have changed, he added.

Microsoft’s new email service will integrate social media services like Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Windows Messenger.

Bloomberg reports that since June 2012, Hotmail is the only one of the top three web-mail services to lose unique visitors, down four percent.

Unique visits to Gmail increased by 17 percent and visits to Yahoo! Mail went up two percent.

Microsoft said one million people have already signed up for the Outlook trial.

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