Microsoft finishes Hotmail to Outlook.com migration
Atlast, after decades of being comparatively inferior e-mail service, Hotmail is now officially dead as Microsoft has successfully completed migrating all Hotmail users to Outlook.com. If you have never heard of Outlook.com, it is a relatively new email service that is regarded as one of the best available now and matches rivals like Gmail (and in some areas, does better than Gmail) while features like SkyDrive and Skype integration truly makes Outlook.com a complete email service. Best part with this migration is that users can continue using their Hotmail email id to login to Outlook.com and continue using the same email address for communication. You can find FAQs regaring the new UI in this page.
After the migration, Microsoft’s Outlook.com has 400 million active email accounts and125 million users access the account via a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync. The migration though was not an easy task as Microsoft had to move 150 petabytes of email data from more than 300 million email accounts in under 6 weeks time.
Apart from migration, Microsoft has also added few more features/tweaks to Outlook.com
- Sending email from other email addresses (like gmail) does not show ‘on behalf of’ message anymore and is sent through the SMTP server of that email service
- Deeper SkyDrive integration. You can now integrate files and pictures directly from SkyDrive.
- Skype integration (still in preview mode)
“We want to give a huge “Thank you” to all of you who have supported Hotmail over the years, for some of you, that’s going back as far as 1996. It has been an amazing journey and we’ve been honored to provide you with a great mail experience for many years. When we launched the original preview of Outlook.com, we knew that we were committing to building the world’s best email with a brand and product experience that spans from consumers all the way to the largest organizations. We’re excited to have you join Outlook.com as we write the next chapter in modern email from Microsoft.”, said, Dick Craddock, Group Program Manager, Outlook.com
