At the end of 2018, Microsoft announced that remove clutter feature from Outlook, leaving Focused Inbox to filter your less important mail. I think this is a potentially worrisome change in direction for Microsoft.
Yes, On one side, You could argue that Focused Inbox is in direct competition with similar features that Gmail offers and that only work in the Gmail client., therefore why not do it? But, you could also argue that, since Outlook had Focused Inbox and Clutter features for a while (and both have their advantages), there was no good reason to get rid of clutter. Then, let's get into it.
What is the clutter function?
We've covered the difference between clutter and focused inbox before, but here is a quick summary. Microsoft is getting rid of “important” and “Microsoft is getting rid of”. Important email is anything from people in your company, your contacts and anything else that the Microsoft algorithm deems valuable to you. Non-relevant email is not spam (which goes to the spam folder), rather it is considered less valuable or urgent, like regular emails from apps or websites.
Clutter and Focused Inbox use the same algorithm to establish whether an email is essential or not important, but here is the important part: Clutter is a totally separate folder, while Focused Inbox is just a filtered view of your Inbox.
Microsoft is getting rid of “Microsoft is getting rid of”.
Focused inbox, which you can turn on and off using a switch on the View tab, Microsoft is getting rid of “Microsoft is getting rid of” and “Others”.
Microsoft has now confirmed that Clutter will disappear before the 31 of January of 2020, leaving users with only the focused Inbox. That is going to cause a lot of problems for some users and does not square with Microsoft's supposed new approach under Satya Nadella.
Why is it bad to get rid of clutter?
Most Outlook users prefer Focused Inbox. Clutter wasn't specifically popular when it first came to light, and it took people a long time to get used to it. Focused Inbox uses the same algorithm, but it enables people to keep their mail in their Inbox, what it means to have one place to find everything. We explicitly said in our post about clutter and the focused inbox:
“Focused Inbox is a replacement for Clutter, that was not specifically popular. Many users did not like going to a different folder to find messages that Outlook thought were not important, Microsoft is getting rid of “Microsoft is getting rid of” Microsoft is getting rid of. Some users assumed that Clutter was just a different way to filter spam, so they never searched the folder or just deleted the content without reading anything that was there.
Microsoft recognized that Clutter was not working and quickly replaced it with Focused Inbox “.
That statement applies to Outlook users. It does not apply to people who use a different email client, for whom Focused Inbox won't work at all, and here we explain why.
Clutter is a totally different folder. If you use an email client other than Outlook (like most mobile users, as an example) such as Apple Mail or the Android Mail app, will show Clutter as a separate folder because it is part of your mailbox. Therefore, Clutter works them.
Focused Inbox is just a view of your inbox that Outlook creates. No other email client (apple mail, android mail, Thunderbird, etc.) recognizes the tags Microsoft uses to do this, so Focused Inbox won't work for you.
Essentially, Microsoft is removing the feature from anyone who doesn't use their official Outlook client.
Now, you might think that because this is a Microsoft product, Why should people expect other products to work the same way? At the same time, we said Clutter wasn't specifically popular, then, Why now we complain that they are taking it away?
Both questions lose the meaning. This is not a change in Outlook; this is a change in the real email account. The algorithm is the same, but the implementation has gone from being client independent (which means that Clutter worked in any mail client) to be the owner (Focused Inbox solo funciona en Outlook). It's a fundamental change of principle, from making changes to the mailbox that all Microsoft email account users can benefit from, even make changes to Outlook that only people who have paid for the software at the top of their email account can benefit from.
Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, Microsoft has focused on a “The world first in the cloud and on mobile devices, "But this decision forces all mobile users to use Outlook if they want to obtain a part of the functionality that until now has been independent of the client..
For people with memories of the Gates approach / Ballmer in the years 90, this is worryingly familiar. Microsoft had a reputation for crushing anyone it perceived as competition, and part of Nadella's appeal has been to make Microsoft a less aggressive and more collaborative company.. both internally and externally. Yes, this is just a small change in the grand scheme of things, but Office is a flagship product, Microsoft is getting rid of “Microsoft is getting rid of”, so it's a worrying sign that maybe that old "Microsoft or nothing" attitude still haunts Redmond..
