Microsoft are planning to discontinue “Legacy Outlook”, meaning the version of Outlook for Windows, (and Outlook for macOS) which you can download and install on your computer. Instead, they will be requiring you to use “New Outlook”, which is actually an entirely web-based email user agent, hosted in Microsoft’s Datacentre, which they are effectively inserting in-between your UK-located computer and your UK-located email service provider.
Now if you’ve already chosen to use Microsoft Office365 as your email hosting provider, this may make minimal difference to you (although keep an eye on where they export your data to and to whom you give them permission to sell it).
But what if you intentionally chose a UK-based email hosting provider? Wouldn’t you want a direct connection between your computer in the UK, and your choice of service provider in the UK? Imagine if all your postal mail had first to be delivered to the United States before reaching your letterbox?
You may watch television on a Panasonic widescreen TV. But what if Panasonic suddenly required that all your TV programmes* had first to be received at a TV-factory in Osaka, Japan, and your TV had to connect to Japan to watch your programmes? Sounds ridiculous, right? We agree!
* I’m aware that this is the British spelling, not the American spelling. 1