Microsoft says all Hotmail users are now on Outlook.com, moves 150 petabytes of data

Microsoft has announced that it has successfully migrated 300 million active Hotmail users to the newer Outlook.com email service. The massive move over means there are now 400 million users of Outlook.com, according to a blog post announcing the milestone.

A more polished email experience than Hotmail

Naturally, a move of this nature means transfer of huge amounts of data as well. The transition meant 150 petabytes of data was migrated over to the Outlook servers in six weeks – a feat that’s still boggling our minds. For those users who held on dearly to Hotmail, Outlook.com will bring a whole new experience.

But, there will be the odd disgruntled user, and Outlook Group Product Manager Dick Craddock had some words of solace for the old-timers. “Of course, whenever a widely-used consumer service makes any substantial change, there will always be some folks that don’t like it, and that shows up in the feedback, too. It’s gratifying in a sense because it means those customers loved the previous set of changes we made. With a communication service that is constantly evolving, we try to strike the right balance between bringing out major improvements and keeping true to what our customers love.”

More from News Analysis

Outlook.com leverages many of Microsoft’s other services like SkyDrive cloud storage and the People app. Microsoft has added support for SMTP send, which means users can send messages from an alias account. With two-step authentication also coming soon, Outlook.com users look to be in safe hands.