[steveblgh]

I think you nailed it with the line: "they get a little street cred back in the hacker community for picking up a YC startup".

Exactly what I was thinking. If it's not the features, not the engineers, it must be the positive buzz they get for it. Probably this is some lame attempt by Microsoft to appear cool and show that they understand the new wave.

[alex_c]

Or, you know, call me crazy, but maybe they just think those would be good features to add to Outlook, and this is the easiest way to add them and keep them out of competitors' products at the same time.

Occam's razor?

[alaskamiller]

Because Bill Gates stays up all night worrying about what steveblgh on Hacker News thinks.