On Tuesday, Microsoft surprised us all with the unveiling of a brand new webmail service called Outlook.com. Sharing the same brand as the company's popular desktop email client, the service is Microsoft's attempt to revamp webmail. The company's Hotmail service has been flagging behind Google's Gmail for quite a while. Will Outlook.com be enough to take on the mighty Google? Maybe so.
Microsoft proudly announced on Tuesday night that one million people had signed up for Outlook.com accounts in less than a day of availability. The announcement was made via Twitter, so there's no further information on this number. For example, we'd like to know if it includes 'upgrades' from Hotmail or completely new sign ups. Similarly, we're sure there was a bit of a rush to secure popular or first-name-last-name email addresses.
Though one million is a massive milestone, Microsoft still has a long way to go before it reaches its goal. When Redmond announced Outlook.com earlier this week, the company described it as "modern email for the next billion mailboxes." It's going to be a while before that one million turns into one billion, but we're sure Microsoft will keep us posted. We'd be interesting in seeing how many people actually use the service. After all, it's one thing to get the curious to sign up, but quite another to get them to switch over from their existing provider.
Did you sign up for Outlook.com? Do you plan on using the account? Let us know in the comments below!
