Microsoft scraps Hotmail for new relaunched Outlook

Hotmail is to be dropped by Microsoft in an attempt to relaunch Outlook as their new webmail service. Microsoft aims to modernise the way we use our emails by integrating other social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, on to Outlook.com – while also refreshing their design to fit with the new Windows 8 platform.

A few features hoped to make Outlook a sucess are fewer ads and new smart filters to organise emails into automatic categories.The change comes as Microsoft aim to secure their dominance as the worlds leading email service provider, despite fierce opposition.

Hotmail claim to still have 350 million users worldwide but in the last five years Google are thought to have signed up an impressive 425 million users. However, according to the web metrics firm ComScore, Hotmail still boasts more traffic than any of its rivals.

“While Gmail and other webmail services like Hotmail have added some features since their introduction, not much has fundamentally changed in webmail over the last 8 years,” blogged Microsoft’s Chris Jones, introducing Outlook.com.

“We think the time is right to reimagine email.”

Current Hotmail users now have the option to ‘upgrade’ their email accounts to new Outlook.com accounts. Initial reports indicate that the transformation has been successful with its official Outlook Twitter account tweeting that it had hit 1 million sign-ups in the first six hours after the announcement.