Well, if your one of those people that believes 60 million people can’t be wrong, then this should interest you. Outlook.com, released in “preview” last Summer, went live yesterday, with another 1.5 million users climbing on board. But what’s all the excitement about? Let me explain.
In this Forbes article, the author writes “Outlook.com… offers a cleaner, more modern user interface that’s more intuitive than Hotmail, improved support for organizing email and cleaning the inbox, with sweep and schedule clean-up standing out as favorite features, and connections to popular social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.”
Still not impressed? How about SkyDrive integration and the ability to share Office documents with other Outlook.com customers via SkyDrive. Oh, you’re probably saying “Google’s been doing that for ages. So what’s Microsoft bringing to the party that’s new and improved.” Granted, Microsoft is envious of Google’s success in this area (especially with their Gmail service) and want some of the action. But maybe there’s more. Let’s find out.
Well, for starters, Microsoft feels there is more and is spending $30 to $90 million of the dollars you spent on Windows 8 and Office 13 to convince you of this. Wait, you didn’t buy these new products from Microsoft? Why not? I digress…
It seems Microsoft might not be doing all this for you, but for more self-serving reasons. It turns out that your addiction to email is the way Internet companies keep you coming back to their websites, and when you log in, your activities are being tracked. Your Internet activity and personal identification are then used to deliver ‘personalized’ ads that help keep those wonderful websites in business. Still not impressed? Me neither. But things are going to get interesting.
With those millions and millions Microsoft is going to spend to get you to switch from Gmail to their wonderful product, mostly what you’ll hear is an anti-Gmail campaign that depicts Gmail as a ‘snooping’ service that scans the contents of your email to deliver ads. Oh, and Microsoft’s not? Give me a break!
I believe I just found a good reason not to climb on the Outlook.com bandwagon. I don’t like dirty politics and I don’t like it when companies I once respected behave this way either. So, have I convinced you that 60 million people can’t be wrong? I think not…
