Microsoft this week announced that Hotmail is officially gone. The service has been rolled into Microsoft’s new Outlook.com service.

Outlook.com Group Program Manager Dick Craddock announced the death of Hotmail on Thursday, over on the Outlook Blog. From the blog post:

We want to give a huge “Thank you” to all of you who have supported Hotmail over the years, for some of you, that’s going back as far as 1996. It has been an amazing journey and we’ve been honored to provide you with a great mail experience for many years. When we launched the original preview of Outlook.com, we knew that we were committing to building the world’s best email with a brand and product experience that spans from consumers all the way to the largest organizations. We’re excited to have you join Outlook.com as we write the next chapter in modern email from Microsoft.

With the added users from Hotmail, Outlook.com can now boast more than 400 million active accounts. Craddock stated that the Outlook team was able to migrate 150 petabytes of email in just 6 weeks while maintaining Hotmail users’ preferences and contacts.

Hotmail users will still be able to use their @hotmail.com email address, but will access their inbox from the Outlook website. Microsoft is now using a single ‘Microsoft Account’ for all of its services, including SkyDrive, which is tightly integrated into Outlook.

Microsoft announced that it’s rolling out a preview of Skype for Outlook.com to those in the UK today. It already integrated Skype into the latest enterprise Outlook software, but now the same functionality will soon be available to regular users on the Web version of Outlook.

The preview version of Skype for Outlook.com will be available soon as a plugin for Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. The plugin will ask you to connect your Microsoft account with your Skype account, and then you can start video calling people in Outlook. Just look for the usual Skype icons when mousing over a friend’s contact details.

Skype for Outlook.com is just the latest in Microsoft’s mission of integrating Skype into pretty much all of its services. It already merged the old Windows Live Messenger client into Skype, and a rumor emerged earlier this year saying that Xbox chat would be replaced by Skype in the next Xbox.

Skype for Outlook.com is available in the UK starting today, but what about everyone else? Microsoft says that its latest Skype integration will be available to users in the US and Germany in the coming weeks. Everybody else will have to wait until Summer.

Last month, an ad for Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite ereader featured a gay couple and made people on the internet argue, as these things tend to do. I guess only straight couples should be able to enjoy ebooks on the beach.

Anyway, it appears that Microsoft is following in Amazon’s footsteps. Their new ad for Outlook leaves no room for speculation concerning the company’s stance on marriage equality. Check it out:

Last month, Microsoft was one of the many tech companies (including Apple, Facebook, and Google) to sign amicus briefs supporting marriage equality. Later this year, the Supreme Court will decide two important cases on the topic – one involving California’s Prop 8 and one involving the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Microsoft was criticized way in 2005 for contemplating turning a pro-gay rights agenda into a neutral one. Eventually, the company decided to support a Washington gay rights bill.

“After looking at the question from all sides, I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “I respect that there will be different viewpoints. But as CEO, I am doing what I believe is right for our company as a whole.”

Since 2005, Washington has been on a path to marriage equality, eventually legalizing gay marriage last year.

According to Microsoft, four out of five people like Outlook.com better.

“We found that about a third of Outlook.com users are active Gmail users trying Outlook.com for the first time,” says Microsoft’s David Law. “We wanted to learn more, so we hired a research firm to recruit hundreds of Gmail users – people that use Gmail as their primary email service – and asked them to try Outlook.com. We asked the Gmail users to sign-up for Outlook.com addresses, forward email from Gmail to Outlook.com, and try Outlook.com’s best features. The Gmail users loved it.”

According to Law, they prefer Outlook.com’s design, spam blocking and management of unwanted messages and photo/document sharing features.

Note: Google did just announce new file insertion capabilities for Gmail today.

“The best part was, after spending just five days with it, 4 out of 5 of these Gmail users said they would switch to Outlook.com,” says Law.

Microsoft says it will soon be launching a one-click archive feature, more keyboard shortcuts, more inbox customization features and an Outlook app for Android.

The company announced the launch of a preview of the service, which it describes as “modern email designed for the next billion mailboxes.”

Here’s what it looks like:

Here’s a walkthrough of the features:

“Email isn’t just about the browser anymore. In fact, email represents 20% of the time we spend on smartphones, and is used extensively on tablets as well as PCs,” says Microsoft’s Chris Jones in a blog post. “Outlook is designed cloud first, so all of your mail is always available wherever you are. Its fresh, clean user interface gets the clutter out of your way-the header has 60% fewer pixels and there are 30% more messages visible in your inbox that the webmail most people are used to. And there are no display ads or large search boxes that take up extra space. Outlook.com also uses Exchange ActiveSync, so it powers your mail, calendar and people experience on your smartphone, tablet, and the new Outlook 2013 Preview.”

New users can get an @Outlook.com email address. Users of Hotmail can upgrade their account, and will be able to send/receive email from @hotmail.com, @msn.com or @live.com addresses. Users of other services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail can set up a new @outlook.com address, and have their other accounts forwarded.

There’s a mobile set-up guide here.

It will be interesting to see if Outlook.com is able to make a bigger dent in the webmail market for Microsoft.

What do you think of it?

This opportunity is possible due to the Outlook Social Connector, which had already established ties between Outlook, LinkedIn, and MySpace.  Microsoft’s looking very well-connected in the social media space as a result.

Indeed, the latest Social Connector upgrade will allow Outlook users to interact with Facebook in all sorts of ways, from seeing pictures and status updates in real time to adding friends.  And it even brings Outlook 2003 and 2007 – as opposed to just Outlook 2010 – into the game.  So lots of data should be flying around.

Microsoft’s paid close attention to issues of privacy, though, taking steps to ensure that no one’s established preferences are disregarded.  Don’t look for any investigations or protests to stem from this move.

An official document explained, "The information from a social network that is available in Outlook is shown based upon the person’s privacy settings for the social network.  If the person has made any information available to you or publicly to everyone on the social network, then that information may also be seen in Outlook."

Otherwise, Microsoft said, "[O]ur goal is to help you stay in touch with the people you care about, and simplify your daily routine. . . .  If you haven’t tried it yet, we encourage you to give the Outlook Social Connector a spin and share with us your thoughts and ideas."

As you’ll see in a moment, the Outlook Social Connector is an accurately named offering.  A post on the LinkedIn Blog explained that, with it, a user will be able to "[k]eep up with LinkedIn connections right from your email inbox."  You can see a picture of what that’ll look like below.

Then comes click-saver number two: the ability to email LinkedIn contacts straight from Outlook.  The Outlook Social Connector will create an Outlook Contacts folder with all of their info, and automatically fill in "to" fields when users start to type out people’s names.

Finally, while using Outlook, it’ll become easier to forge new connections.  The post suggested, "Just click a button next to any e-mail you receive and instantly send an invitation to connect to the e-mail’s sender."

We’ll admit: there may not be a huge market for this sort of thing.  But in certain sectors (HR, PR, etc.), the Outlook Social Connector’s tie-up with LinkedIn should come in handy, and will likely increase the profiles of both entities.

Related Articles:

> LinkedIn, Twitter Connect Through Status Updates

> LinkedIn Tests A New Design

> LinkedIn Announces 50 Million User Milestone

Google Calendar Sync, as it’s named, is supposed to sync calendars at intervals of your choice, and in either direction you please.  On the Official Google Enterprise Blog, Matt Kulick adds, "You can set the default privacy level in Google Calendar to ‘private’ so events synced from Microsoft Outlook calendar are marked private, and only you (or others who you’ve granted permission to view event details) will see them on Google Calendar."

 Google Calendar Help Page

The tool is available right now, and like most of Google’s offerings, is available for free.  We feel obligated you warn you, though, that it may not work too well.

On Google Operating System, 20 comments follow an article on the matter.  They’re not all negative, but several mention problems, and a few more suggest alternatives like Plaxo.  On Google Blogoscoped, there are 14 comments, and some issues are also raised there.

Nothing appears to be catastrophically wrong with Google Calendar Sync, and no calendar events have been reported lost.  Give it a try if you want; just don’t get too set on giving up the old copy/paste routine.

Outlook Connector Beta enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook:

• Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
• Manage your Live Mail Contacts.
• Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
• Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.

With a paid subscription, Outlook Connector Beta enables these additional features:

• Manage, share, and synchronize your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook.
• Access your Tasks and Notes.

Download Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Beta here.

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