MSN
Also known as: The Microsoft Network
MSN is a Web portal and collection of Internet services provided by Microsoft. Since its introduction, MSN has undergone numerous metamorphoses. Currently, it is primarily a portal that redirects visitors to Microsoft's online services and third-party content.
From The Microsoft Network to now
At its launch in 1995, at the same time as Windows 95, The Microsoft Network was positioned as an access provider with its own services partially separate from the public Internet, somewhat similar to the Dutch Het Net. To access MSN and the Internet, Microsoft offered its own dial-up service, which, by the way, still exists. In the early days, many of the MSN services and content required the use of special software that integrated closely with the Microsoft operating system. The integration with Windows, by the way, earned Microsoft regular criticism, even much later.
In the late 1990s, it became clear that many users preferred other providers and platforms to access the Internet. The Web was slowly maturing and becoming more accessible to everyone. With the bursting of the Internet bubble, the traditional role of the first generation of online tech companies changed, including The Microsoft Network, AOL, Yahoo! and Lycos. Many major players' objective was to build a single brand and network consisting of infrastructure, software, portals and information and, in doing so, gain as many loyal users as possible. Shaking up the market forced companies to specialize and look for revenue models.
During these developments, MSN slowly changed from an all-encompassing network to a more open umbrella for Microsoft's large number of Internet services, including MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger and MSN Search. The web portal MSN.com, which provided access to all of these services in addition to its own content, continued to occupy a central position in this. Despite various redesigns of the MSN brand and the web portal itself and shifts in the services offered, this situation has remained virtually unchanged to date.
MSN Search
Despite leveraging the dominance of operating system Windows, Microsoft seems to have missed the boat on the Internet in a few areas. The clearest example is online search, a key link in the online economy. Almost everywhere in the world, Google has emerged as the most popular search engine, and among several good efforts, Microsoft plays only a limited role.
For a long time, Microsoft did not have its own search engine. For years, MSN Search offered search results from, successively, Inktomi (later acquired by Yahoo!), Looksmart and AltaVista. Not until 2005 did Microsoft offer its own search engine for the first time under the name MSN Search.
Partly because the popularity of MSN and MSN Seach fell short of Microsoft's ambitions, many online services were (re)launched in 2006 and 2007 under the new Windows Live brand. As Windows Live Search, the search engine also underwent a metamorphosis, offering paid search results for the first time. Despite many developments, the new identity did not bring the results hoped for.
In 2009, the search service was repositioned under the new name Bing.
