Outlook To Replace Hotmail By End Of Summer

Microsoft is fully replacing Hotmail with Outlook.com, which will be its official webmail service from here on out.

If you’ve got a Hotmail account, Microsoft will start auto-updating accounts with full migration to Outlook planned by this summer, reports NBC. The move comes in light of surprise growth in the Outlook mail service, which has gotten over 60 million active users in six short months. Microsoft is also getting rid of the “customer preview” label, and is launching a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign.

If you do have a Hotmail account, don’t worry. It won’t be deleted on you, you’ll just be re-routed to Outlook when you log in. Your @hotmail email address will stick around indefinitely, but you can use the account to create new @outlook email addresses if you want.

Hotmail users who want to get a head start on the shift can switch over to Outlook now. Just log into Hotmail and click “settings” at the top right. You’ll see an option to convert your address.

The Washington Post opines that Outlook is much more relevant and “with the times” than Hotmail, and can really give Gmail some serious competition as an email client. Outlook is streamlined, socially integrated, the whole nine yards. Outlook hosts roughly 60 million users against Hotmail’s 350 million, but most of the Outlook accounts are reportedly “fresh” as opposed to migrated users.

Roughly one-third of Outlook users are (or were) Gmail users, as well.

You can check out an ad for the Hotmail shift to Outlook below:

[iframe src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/57Xk4kbm0cs” width=”560? height=”315?]