The world's largest software company is renaming its Hotmail service Outlook, giving it a sharp new look, social network links, and new features for handling the tide of junk and mass mail that swampsmany users.

　　Hotmail was still the world's largest online mail service as of June, according to the latest comScore figures available, with 324 million users, or about 36 percent of the global market.

　　But it is losing customers to Google's Gmail, the fastest-growing rival, which now has about 31 percent of the market. Yahoo Mail is staticwith about 32 percent.

　　In a bid to recapture growth, Microsoft is renaming the service Outlook, a name familiar to most corporateworkers who use Microsoft's Office email application, and sprucingup the whole experience. Hotmail users will be promptedto switch over to the new service over the next few months.

　　Hotmail, launched in 1996, was one of the first online email services, but it has not been updated by Microsoft for eight years.

　　The new look is clean and uncluttered, featuring lots of white space, reminiscentof Google's recent makeover of Gmail. Relatively unobtrusiveadvertisements appear in a column to the right of the screen when looking at folders. They do not appear when a message is open.

　　Users can link up with their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts, to see the latest updates from friends and contacts. Online chat is available via Facebook.

　　The new mail service also allows easy use of Microsoft's Internet-based products, such as SkyDrive for storing documents, Office Web Apps for working away from a PC, and will eventually have Skype video chat built in.

　　英语快讯：微软日前将Hotmail更名为Outlook。改版后的新网络邮箱服务更为直观，增加了社交网站链接、垃圾邮件处理等新功能。微软此举意在与谷歌的Gmail相抗衡。自从微软1996年推出hotmail邮箱后，多年来几乎没有大的变革。与此同时，互联网发展迅速，谷歌的Gmail、雅虎的Yahoo Mail纷纷崛起，和Hotmail一起形成了“三足鼎立”的局面。Hotmail更名Outlook后，主要就是增加了社交网站链接的功能，加上outlook系统中原有的大量公司用户，微软的这次改名行动可谓是一场“逆袭”。