Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live services, said that "It offers the first major improvement to cloud mail in eight years. We think the time is right to re-imagine personal email, from the datacenter to the user experience."

Microsoft also announced that as for now, all Hotmail and Microsoft Live users can log into Outlook.com with their respective ids.

"Hotmail users can upgrade to Outlook.com and will get the new user experience but will continue to send/receive mail from their @hotmail.com address. Hotmail users that upgrade will use the same username/password to login; all their mail, contacts, and calendar items will still be available in the new user interface. Sometime in the future, we'll upgrade all Hotmail users to the new Outlook.com user interface," the company said.

Microsoft has used its latest Windows 8 Metro interface, as the core ingredient in design. Jones exclaimed that "The fresh, clean user interface gets the clutter out of a user's way. The header has 60pct fewer pixels and there are 30pct more messages visible in inbox than the webmail most people are used to. And there are no display ads or large search boxes that take up extra space."