Microsoft has integrated Outlook.com with Skype in several countries, including the UK, US, Brazil, Canada, France and Germany, offering users the ability to tap Skype functions and contacts from within the interface of the webmail application.
The link between the two products lets Outlook.com users do Skype video chats, audio calling and instant messaging. Other countries where this is now available are Brazil, France and Canada. Microsoft plans to offer this integration worldwide "in the near future," according to a blog post.
Microsoft is pursuing this integration because e-mail exchanges are often escalated to audio and video communications, so bridging the interface gap between Outlook.com and Skype makes sense, the company said.
"E-mail is an important and personal tool for most people, but there are moments when you want to be able to speak live or chat face-to-face," wrote Dawn Martynuik, group product manager of Outlook.com, in the blog post.
Ironically, Outlook.com already has links with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Outlook.com hit a rough patch last week, when it malfunctioned in various ways for an undisclosed number of users between Wednesday and Sunday. The glitches impacted mobile access to the inbox and the ability to share SkyDrive files via e-mail.
Outlook.com has had other stability, availability and performance problems in recent months, including an outage in mid-March.
Microsoft launched a preview of Outlook.com in July 2012, billing it as a reinvention of webmail from the user interface to the back end designed to let the company compete better against Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Outlook.com eventually replaced Hotmail as the company’s webmail service.
Last month, Microsoft celebrated Outlook.com’s first anniversary, rattling off a list of positives, while acknowledging that the service hasn’t been as stable as expected.
"We had some bumps over the last year and there were places where our performance hasn’t met the high standard we set for ourselves," Dick Craddock, group programme manager of Outlook.com, wrote in the blog post, published on 31 July.
IDG News Service
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