Microsoft’s Outlook.com web-based email service today moved out of the preview stage into full availability, with over 60 million users having flocked to the service since the launch of the trial phase.
Microsoft revealed it has received plentiful feedback and critique over the preview phase, enabling the company to arrive at a product ready for global launch.
It also said that since the Outlook preview launch in July of last year over 60 million users have voluntarily begun using the service.
Users of Microsoft’s previous web-based service, Hotmail.com, will be migrated to Outlook.com over the coming months, and the company will embark on an intensive marketing push.
“Today is a major milestone in our mission to provide people everywhere with the world’s best email experience. You’ll also see us kick off a large-scale marketing effort around the world to show that Outlook.com can get you going,” Microsoft said.
“And because we’re confident that Outlook.com is the best email service available for consumers and ready to scale to a billion people, we’ll soon start to upgrade hundreds of millions of Hotmail users to the new Outlook.com experience.”
The design of the new service is intended to be more intuitive and stylish, and provide a powerful tool for people to keep in contact. Outlook will provide a content sharing tool, Skydrive, allowing users to share files over email, and will have advanced security tools to allow for maximum control by users.
A feature of the new email service that Microsoft has highlighted is the fact advertisements have been replaced by on-screen Facebook and Twitter updates, through the possibility to link social media accounts to a user’s Outlook account.
