Microsoft at last decided to revive their share in the web based email service by shifting their present and old Hotmail.com interface to a brand new metro based design in the form of Outlook.com. The new domain is under the control of Microsoft only but users cannot use it for their email up till now.
Hotmail.com was launched in 1996 by an Indian entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia but after one year it was purchased by Microsoft for 400 million dollar. It was then renamed as MSN Hotmail. Up till now Hotmail is one of the most popular email service in the web world and face fierce competition from other popular email providers such as Gmail and Yahoo.
The new Outlook.com is inspired by the Metro interface which is often praised for being one of most user friendly design out there. Microsoft claims that Outlook.com has a clean and easy to use interface. Microsoft also boasts of the fact that the new Outlook.com will not show advertisements to its users like Gmail do its users. The new Outlook.com is also touch friendly and is optimized for the use of website on tablet computers.
The popularity of the new Outlook.com email service can be adjudged from the fact that nearly 1 million users signed up for the service within 6 hours. All present Hotmail users can switch to the new Outlook interface from their admin panel. Although one can continue to use the old interface of Hotmail but Microsoft will ultimately force these users to switch to the Outlook.com.