If you look below this post, there is a story on how quickly Bing is growing. Well, Microsoft is throwing some gasoline onto the fire. Bing has now been integrated into Windows Hotmail, which is by far still the largest webmail provider in the world. Hotmail’s serves 343 million monthly users, Yahoo mail 285 million, and the best but still third place Gmail a paltry 146 million [data from ComScore]. In other words, this change is going to affect more users than the United States has citizens.
Now, it can be found in the “Quick Add” section of Hotmail. I never was a Hotmail user, but the new Bing integration will be bringing maps, web search, image search, and the excellent Bing video functionality. Given my unfair/unfounded conception that Hotmail users are not technologists, I have a suspicion that they will not mostly be aware of Bing. Talk about cross branding brilliance. This move by MSFT takes a giant property, and hooks a baby by skyhook to it. Want to hit the stars? Easiar to just hitch a ride.
