It’s always fantastic when you see two software giants getting along for the consumer’s benefit. Microsoft has begun rolling out Google Chat integration along a wide-array of its products, here are the details.
One of the first applications to enable the feature will be Outlook.com. Microsoft has been spending a lot of time upgrading Outlook, including a new calendar UI, a refreshed Outlook.com app for Android devices, two step verification for your account, new international domains for your email address, a preview of Skype calling in Outlook.com and deeper integration of SkyDrive directly within Outlook.com.
Microsoft made the announcement earlier today and talked about it’s services saying, “we heard that some of you who switched over from Gmail still want to chat with friends stuck on Gmail. Today, we’re excited to announce that you can now also chat with your Google friends”. Microsoft went on to say, “With this feature, the next time you’re reading an email from someone who uses Gmail, you can reply with a quick chat right from your Outlook.com inbox. And if you’re working together on an Office document in SkyDrive, you can send an instant message to a Google contact with just a click”. You can expect this to start rolling out in your inbox “over the next couple of days”.
With the new services that Microsoft offers, “Once your services are connected, you can see all of your contacts together in one place. And since you are often connected to a person through more than one service, we automatically match up contacts that are the same and link them together. Of course, you can also link any contacts we missed or unlink any contacts that don’t belong together”.
When you open the Messaging pane in Outlook.com or SkyDrive, you’ll see a message that helps you set up chat with your Google contacts. Just click it to get started; setup will only take a minute. Then as part of setting up the connection, you’ll see “Google’s authorization flow”. This is how Google helps you control which services can access your Google information. Clicking “Allow access” will allow Microsoft’s chat and contacts services to connect to Google and set up chat.
Microsoft also states that “The messaging experience works across your Outlook.com inbox, calendar and People contact list, as well as SkyDrive.com”. So if you’re working together on a document with a Google friend, “you can be chatting with them at the same time without leaving SkyDrive. You can even share a link to the document and edit it together in real time.”
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