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This ad is for Office 365, whatever that is.

Office 365 is a cloud-based office setup from MS - which includes email and office docs its aimed at corporations. It is a newer version of what was BPOS. Google have been trying to expand into that corporate world. MS are fighting back since it represents their bread and butter.

According to Gartner, Google Apps for Business represents .5% of Google's almost 40 billion revenue. That would be about US$ 200 million a year. What are Microsoft's BPOS/365 revenue numbers?

I have no idea about the numbers but by MS's "bread and butter" I was referring to business software sales of offline office suite. MS's response to google's entry into that market was to ramp up their own online versions of their more familiar office products.

I created an account, the whole thing looks pretty good and works from Firefox. Unfortunately I can't send inbound mail 10 minutes after creation of the account, it bounces, but I can send outbound mail.

EDIT: works. This could be a real competitor to Gmail/apps for SMBs.

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