Ever since Wave 3, Windows Live have always had the ability to connect within various social services from across the web, most notably services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. By connecting other social services and websites to Windows Live, depending on the connection, you’ll be able to do things like viewing and posting status updates directly to/from Windows Live, integrating the contact list (which automatically de-duplicates for you), or in Facebook’s case, access Facebook Chat from Windows Live.
There are currently over 88 connected services from all across the world available on Windows Live. However, while YouTube and Blogger are available as a connected service, Google itself never made it onto the list. While you could always “import” your Google contacts into Windows Live (meaning their contact details are copied over to as a Windows Live contact instead), this is different from having it exist as a connected service (where there is a link between Windows Live and Google, and any updates to the contacts on Google will be reflected in Windows Live periodically). We’ve recently noticed that this is changing, and Google is now finally available as a connected service to Windows Live:
At the moment, you can access your Google contacts from Messenger and Hotmail, and Windows Live will do the de-duplication for you in case you have the same contact on Messenger, Facebook or LinkedIn already:
However, the social aspects of Google+ are not available yet, so don’t expect your Google+ social feeds to start flowing into your Messenger Social or Windows Phone. This might set to change in the future, given that Microsoft is continuously expanding the connected service’s capability over time (for example, most recently with China’s micro-blogging service Sina Weibo). There was also a wild rumor that Google+ is coming to Windows Phone, although the validity of the source is questionable.
You can connect Google to Windows Live now by clicking here.