What Happens to MSN?

Many of MSN’s most popular services will be rebranded as “Windows Live,” including Hotmail (with more than 200 million e-mail accounts, according to Microsoft), MSN Messenger (180 million active accounts), MSN Spaces (which launched in Dec. 2004 and already has more than 15 million blogs), and MSN Search (which, as the number-three search site, handles more than 500 million queries per month). Moreover, these and the other Windows Live services have been the beneficiaries of frequent updates over the last two years, while other MSN sites and services, such as the MSN Music download site and MSN Premium online service for broadband users, have seen little change or investment. This spells an uncertain future for the MSN brand, which was launched in 1995 and originally stood for “Microsoft Network,” an ISP and online service that competed against AOL.

At the time of the Windows Live launch announcement, Microsoft said that the following services would still be branded as MSN:

• MSN Internet