Microsoft has today disclosed its plan of removing Google and Facebook chat from its email service Outlook.com. The support will be discontinued within next couple of weeks, as per an e-mail by Outlook to its customer.
The official notification by Microsoft says that the company is removing the Google Talk integration ‘due to Google’s decision to discontinue the chat protocol used by the Google Talk platform’. No reasons have been disclosed as to why Facebook chat support too will be discontinued.
“We understand that this may disappoint some of our customers, but we hope that you’ll try Skype for Outlook.com chat, and voice, video calling, so you can take advantage of the more robust ways to keep in touch with friends and family,” the e-mail message from the Outlook.com team said.
Microsoft says that however Facebook and Google chat are coming to a halt, the People feature that keeps contacts up-to-date will remain unaffected. Microsoft is now attempting to push its own Skype chatting and calling services as an alternative chat option. The email asked its customers to activate their Skype for Outlook.com. As earlier said, the services will be there in Outlook just for few more weeks, and then Skype will be the only option to connect to the people.
