MSN Testing Blogging Service

As part of its ongoing competition with Google, MSN has launched a trial Web logging (or “blogging”) service in Japan in Aug. 2004 and plans to follow up with services in the United States and elsewhere.

Matching Google, Feature for Feature

Web logs (“blogs”) are Web-based journals that can be easily updated by end users. Google entered the blogging space in Mar. 2003 when it purchased Pyra Labs and its Blogger tool. Meanwhile, over the last year, MSN has faced declines in traffic on several key sites (including MSN Search, Hotmail, and MSNBC) as Google’s traffic has increased (according to ComScore MediaMetrix numbers from June 2003 to June 2004).

To reverse this trend, MSN is trying to match Google feature for feature: in summer 2004 it relaunched its search site with a spare interface resembling Google’s; launched the beta version of a news aggregation service, MSN Newsbot, similar to Google News; announced plans to increase the amount of storage on Hotmail to compete with Google’s Gmail service; and is now testing a blogging service. Simultaneously, MSN is trying to expand the scope of its search services into areas in which Google cannot easily follow-for example, by offering search tools for users’ hard drives and e-mail. (See “MSN Acquires E-Mail Search Provider“.)