April is the month chosen by Microsoft, as we told you back then, for One Outlook to start reaching the current channel, so that Windows 10 and Windows 11 users can already choose between continuing to use their current mail. , a very lightweight email client that has its supporters and detractors, or make the leap to a much more complete email management experienceintegrated into Microsoft 365, and which reminds us of Microsoft’s earlier approaches to this type of application.

If you don’t know, One Outlook, which Microsoft started a public test of earlier this year, unifies email and calendar management, in addition, it provides an interface consistent with the versions of Outlook found on smartphones and on the web. This is something that we can already deduce from its name, which suggests that the intention is to offer a unified Outlook on all platforms, so that the experience when jumping from one device to another is uniform.

For his arrival to the general public, It is essential that One Outlook offers compatibility with major email services. It is true that Microsoft’s email service is one of the most used, but the most common thing for most users is to use several accounts from different services and be able to manage them from one client, and this is what the great majority of them offer, and that for both desktops and devices. However, as of today, One Outlook is still the exception.

However, this is very close to changing because, as we can read in the official blog of Microsoft 365 for Insiders, One Outlook is already testing compatibility with accounts from third-party services, starting with Gmail. And yes, as you may have already guessed from the origin of the information and also from the fact that we are talking about tests, this means that at this time this option is only available to some members of the insider program. Some, not all, because it looks like Microsoft is doing some A/B testing.

According to the said publication, Gmail is the first, but not the only one, as it will also add compatibility soon Yahoo and iCloud, as well as the ability to connect other mailboxes via IMAP, which will exponentially expand the scope of the application, which seems to me essential with regard to its launch if Microsoft wants to make it the reference mail client for its users, and I have no doubt that this is precisely what Redmond plans. . Of course, they will have to hurry for this.