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| Outlook.com |
There are four reasons why some users — especially professionals — will be
legitimately tempted to make the switch from Gmail.
1. Automatic folders
The best new innovation in Outlook.com is its “automatic folders” feature.
The system attempts to smartly sort some of mail for user by automatically
creating virtual folders for common stuff like email newsletters, Facebook and
Twitter alerts, and other repetitive messages that can end up burying more
important emails from human beings you actually need to correspond with.
Obviously, since this is run by an algorithm, there will certainly be some
false positives and negatives and user might have to tweak it, but many user like
the low-touch nature of this feature. Microsoft has also tried to streamline
the process of setting up inbox rules as well in Outlook.com.
Microsoft’s Chris Jones summed up the feature. “Outlook.com automatically
sorts your messages from contacts, newsletters, shipping updates, and social
updates,” wrote Jones, “and with our Sweep features you can move, delete and
set up powerful rules in a few, simple clicks so you can more quickly get to
the email you really want.”
Another mail management feature in Outlook.com is that you can hover over a
message and get a set of actions to delete the message or flag it as important
or sort it to a folder — and users can even customize the functions they want
to see on the hover-over.
2. Mobile experience
The biggest benefit that Microsoft has in designing a new web mail service in
2012 is that it can optimize it for today’s intensely-mobile world.
“The way people do mail on their mobile phone tends to be a little
different,” said Brian Hall, General Manager of Windows Live and Internet
Explorer. “They don’t do as much mail management.”
With that in mind, Microsoft used the automatic folder feature as its way of
helping organize and prioritize users’ inbox in a way that can work in
virtually any type of desktop or mobile email client.
“Most people on a phone or tablet use the native mail client,” said Hall.
“In those instances you want to make sure you work with any inbox. It’s a
different approach than Priority Inbox from Google because they have to go
create clients for mobile or else it breaks Priority Inbox.”
Hall also stressed that Microsoft is focused on delivering an excellent
mobile web experience. In fact, the company is so focused on the native client
and mobile web experience of Outlook.com that it doesn’t currently have plans
to build an app for Microsoft’s own Windows Phone 7. ”It works beautifully
with the native client,” said Hall.
On the other hand, he said they are working on an Android app, because
“Android devices are less likely to have an Exchange Active Sync client.”
3. Privacy protection
One of the creepiest parts of Gmail has always been the fact that it does
text-mining on user emails and uses that information to surface targeted ads. That’s
the price user pay for unlimited storage and a free service.
For example, if
you’re emailing back-and-forth with a family member about a trip to go hiking,
Gmail will simultaneously surface text ads for things like Rocky Mountain
vacations, hiking boots, and protein bars. While these ads are generally
unobtrusive and occasionally even useful, it still freaks out some people to
realize that Google is essentially “reading their mail.” This is especially
true for business professionals and others who use email to transmit
potentially valuable or sensitive information.
Capitalizing on this uneasiness, Microsoft is promising that Outlook.com
will not do text-mining on inbox, while still offering its service for free and
with “virtually unlimited storage.”
“We don’t scan your email content or attachments and sell this information
to advertisers or any other company, and we don’t show ads in personal
conversations,” Jones stated.
That doesn’t mean Outlook.com won’t have ads. There are right-column ads on
the main inbox screen, but there aren’t ads on individual messages. Also, these
ads are going to be targeted based on what Microsoft knows about the user in
general, just not on the content of individual’s messages.
4. Social integration
One of plug-ins for Gmail is which fills the right column in Gmail with
contact information about the person you’re emailing. It draws that information
from Linked In, Twitter, and Facebook (once you’ve logged in to those services)
and will even show you the Linked In job title and latest status updates from
the contact you’re emailing.
Microsoft has taken this kind of functionality and built it directly into
Outlook.com, filling the right column of its message screen with this same kind
of social contact data, but displaying it in a little bit simpler, cleaner way
that follows the Metro UI style. Outlook.com doesn’t appear to show quite as
much data.
However, Microsoft has taken social integration a step further. User can not
only view people in their social networks from within Outlook.com and see their
latest updates, but from the “People hub” they can also respond to status
updates on Twitter and write on someone’s Facebook wall, all directly from
Outlook.com. You can also do Facebook chat within Outlook.com. The instant
messaging functionality itself is another strong feature of Outlook.com. The
implementation is certainly better integrated and more usable than GTalk in
Gmail.
Bottom line
Hall said Microsoft was focused on several key priorities in Outlook.com: “Clean
UI, design for tablets and all devices, connected with the services you
actually use (Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In), works great with [Microsoft]
Office and Sky Drive, and actually prioritizes your privacy.”
I also like that Microsoft isn’t afraid to admit that this is aimed directly
at stealing some of Gmail’s thunder. Hall said, ”If you’re a heavy Google Docs
or a Google+ user, then Gmail is probably for you. Otherwise, if you use
Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and Office, then Outlook [dot com] is better.”
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