Outlook is used by people worldwide for accessing their mail everywhere (not just from Microsoft’s servers). Microsoft was loosing terain to Gmail and Yahoo in the e-mail niche. Outlook.com was launched as an internet mail service that plans to compete against Google’s Gmail. Microsoft promotes it as “modern email”.
Google launched Gmail back in 2004 (8 years after Hotmail was launched). Although Hotmail was an older service, Gmail managed to get a lot of attention back then with its innovative anti-spam filters and with a huge amount of email storage space.
Microsoft plans to do the same thing now and Outlook.com, which already is a well known brand, might be a candidate for the number one mail service in the world. More than one million users already signed up with Outlook.com in less than 6 hours from its launch.