Microsoft Overhauls its Hotmail to give tough fights to its closest rival Gmail

As per the announcement made recently by Microsoft, there is in the pipeline an upgraded version of Hotmail to be launched soon, and will be named as Windows Live Hotmail. Chris Jones, corporate vice president for Microsoft, revealed this in a press briefing in San Francisco, and briefed reporters present there about changes made by Microsoft in its yesteryears’ popular mail service. In the new version, the great importance is given to upgraded inbox features, adding/sharing photos & MS office documents. Does this mean, Microsoft has whistled the war against Google, as all these features are part of Google’s popular Gmail.

In the revised version, there also can be done automatic sweeping of mails from inbox, and if the Gmail and Yahoo mail inboxes have also been added then, these can also be summarily swept too. Further, users will also be able to auto-preview photos without leaving the inbox. Photos from third party services such as Flicker, SmugMug can also be viewed. As an other option, the service also offers users the option of uploading photos & sharing them through Microsoft’s cloud-based SkyDrive, enabling users do the job by just sending an email link than sending a complete bunch of photos.

The upgraded version also allows watching videos from third party services such as Hulu and Youtube without leaving the hotmail. For this upgraded version, Microsoft will offer service of pushing windows Live email, contacts & calendar onto cell phone using its Exchange ActiveSync service. But, for Hotmail & corporate Exchange accounts, the users are required to use smartphones which support dual ActiveSync connections.

The new version will also enable viewing, editing & sharing Microsoft Office documents even the handset is not installed with office suite which means that Hotmail will work as an alternative of MS Office Web’s editing tools.

Users will also get a bunch of other features including separate views to watch social network updates, emails from other inboxes, shipping information etc.

The most promising feature of the revised version is the option of using an encrypted HTTPS secured connection. It is expected that the Microsoft will follow Google’s path and will make this option available as default as later did with Gmail after occurrence of China originated Cyber attacks.