Sounds like a good alternative to people who are trying to de-Google themselves, but trying to get rid of Google entirely will also require script/cookie blockers in web browsers, avoiding Chrome and Android entirely, etc.
I’m not sure it’s entirely new, though... hasn’t Microsoft run the “live.com” webmail system for some time now?
— Outlook mail has been around for six months and opens up a new universe of outlook.com email addresses
-— Those who were using hotmail, windows live mail, had an msn.com email address ...all now must log onto at the outlook.com mail webpage. They are now part of the outlook mail system
Live.com replaced Hotmail. Outlook Mail is replacing Live.com. Live.com was Microsoft’s attempt at a drop-box type system with cloud storage. Outlook Mail is Microsoft’s Office 365 web portal for email.
Microsoft is trying to get into the “cloud” movement with much of their product. I actually have a meeting in an hour with Microsoft to discuss our corporation’s readiness for Office 365. I’m personally not a cloud fan, but most major companies are going toward an “always online” scheme with online licensing and access.
At stake here is Microsoft’s licensing monies and tracking of license usage. They can do away with User and Device CALs, they can do away with EAs (Enterprise Agreements), and they can do away with the MAP (Microsoft Assessment and Planning) tool for licensing “true-up” if they can get everyone hooked into the cloud for everything.
Think of it like we’re going back to the old “dumb terminal” days where a thin-net BNC cable connects you back to a server that validates your existence (licensing) and feeds you everything you need (applications) without having a CPU/memory/hard disk sitting right there with you.
It’s actually quite ingenious since a majority of users don’t require all of the horsepower in their machines. Instead, you build a hulking server that can offer services to clients with the only bottleneck being the network. Since most corporate environments are on GiB Ethernet anyway, bandwidth isn’t an issue and applications are run on the server with output at your desktop.
It’s already in place with products like VMware’s View system, it’s just becoming more mainstream.