Microsoft Builds New Tool To Help Gmail Users Move To Outlook.com

Microsoft would greatly appreciate it if you could knock off that Gmailing business and move to its Outlook.com email service. I refuse to, and so do more people than Microsoft prefers, so the company today released a new tool that will make it easier for Gmail users to jump ship.

The Outlook.com switching tool is designed to make changing inbox homes more seamless and less an exercise in re-tagging. It will propagate over the next few weeks to all 400 million-plus Outlook.com users — as well as current Gmail users who have yet to make the move — a simple path to a new email home.

The tool, which you can find directions for here, will hold your hand when changing teams, though expect to wait a bit as it could be a while for your email to slip over. The transition will bring over your most recent email more quickly than the rest. But, you should be sorted in short order. The new tool will land over the next few weeks. If you don’t have it now, sit tight.

The company has research indicating that people are more willing to change email providers if the friction betwixt the two is minimized. That’s logical. So, as Microsoft wants to knock Gmail off its tech throne (name a technology leader who swears by Outlook.com over Gmail), it is working to lower the delta between leaving Google and dropping into its own product.

Outlook.com is a worthy tool that is far superior to its Hotmail predecessor. Buckled with functionally unlimited storage, Outlook.com grew quickly organically, and then benefited from the end of Hotmail itself.

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