Remember that glorious, free, permanent 5MB Yahoo! Email account we all had? I mean the one where we’d empty our trash every day for fear of the inbox becoming full, emails bouncing back to sender due to this teeny capacity. Then Gmail launched, gave us 1GB of space that constantly grew, and disrupted email service as we know it. Nowadays, with data centers pop up and storage becoming cheaper, size is no longer the determining factor when choosing an email service.

Microsoft just revamped (yes, once again!) Hotmail/Live email accounts with a reimagined new interface called Outlook.com and is hoping this new moniker will attract loyal users away from the likes of Google and Yahoo’s offerings. According to comScore, Hotmail has been the most popular with 325 million users while Gmail trails at 289 million users. These numbers reflect only home and business users and not the growing base of smartphone device users.

I personally found Hotmail and Live to be clunky, slow, and cluttered with display ads. In my opinion, the web-based email service was good for casual users that didn’t mind the scattered and unintuitive interface. Gmail has therefore been my companion for many years. I was actually reluctant to even try Outlook.com based on my past experience of not so neat interface loaded with unwanted advertising.

This newest iteration totally defeats my earlier apprehensiveness to Microsoft’s offering and has me seriously comparing Gmail to Outlook.com. Apart from taking on the new streamlined Metro look (as in Windows 8), organization features similar to Gmail, and receiving tight integration with SkyDrive, Outlook.com has been knit closely with social networking features. Whereas GoogleTalk and Google+ are the only networks supported on Gmail, Outlook.com includes a plethora of networking choices (that I actually use): Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Skype. You see status updates, Tweets, pictures to enrich your email experience. Outlook.com also aims to be mobile-friendly as people use more smartphones and tablets to access email than their PCs and Macs these days. In basic inbox view, Microsoft claims that it can show more messages than Gmail – about 30% more.

There are some features that I am really delighted to learn about Outlook.com. On the privacy side of things, Microsoft doesn’t advertise based on your personal emails’ content, while Gmail does. Breaking more size limitations, Microsoft doesn’t cap account sizes (read: unlimited) or attachment sizes; anything over 25MB is automatically handled and sent via SkyDrive, a step-up from having to upload files to Google Drive or Dropbox and then sending. And my favorite – the ability to sign up for disposable email addresses. Yes, disposable, like a tissue. Especially useful when signing up on less trusty websites and when you don’t want to give out your real email address. Apparently this is a carryover from Hotmail but definitely was not advertised enough! Lastly, Microsoft isn’t going to force you to change your email address from a Hotmail or Live account. You can link your existing accounts to Outlook.com or just migrate over to a single Outlook.com email address. They’ve made things simple.

Technically speaking, Outlook.com is not built from the ground-up, but it isn’t a refashioned Hotmail service either. There’s new code and technology that was deployed with a mix of older code that works well. It doesn’t have to be entirely new to challenge the likes of Gmail, but it does need to do email better and be significantly better at handling communication from multiple channels and networks than before. I think this is a success for Microsoft and that’s coming from an avid Google fan. They had over a million registrations the first day, which is another testament to its popularity. It’s a very strong competitor to email services that aren’t geared for casual users.

All the major players – Google, Microsoft, and Apple – each have their own solution to email, cloud storage, and document and file management. Going forward, the success of each product offering will likely depend on these companies abilities to tightly integrate them into their mobile lineup. People don’t want to be carrying around an iPhone, receive email via Outlook.com, and manage their documents on Google Drive. The best all-inclusive solution might still be ahead but Outlook.com appears to be a great first step in that direction.

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Birju, a NRI (Non Resident Indian) living in the United States, is the Executive Director of Kansas City Free Eye Clinic and an avid technology geek who also is a strong community pillar with all his volunteer work. All in all he is a Young Entrepreneur with soul of an angel. Dipping in the pool with his iPhone in the pocket or getting excited at the idea of shopping are some of his unique talents.

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