Pham Dinh Vien

The Microsoft Network, or MSN, is a collection of services brought about by the Microsoft Company. This range of Internet services started on August 24, 1995 as an online service and Internet service provider, at the same time when the Windows 95 operating system was released. While at the beginning it was just a simple online service for Windows 95, since then MSN has come up with more and more various and complex products. The MSN brand name was used by Microsoft to put on the market a number of popular web-based services in the 1990s, such as Hotmail and Messenger. Then, Microsoft started reorganizing many of these in 2006, this time under the new name Windows Live. In spite of the changes, MSN.com, MSN’s Internet portal, is still widely used. Actually it is the 6th most visited domain name on the Internet.

As an Internet service provider, the MSN was designed as a dial-up online content provider. It used to supply proprietary content via an artificial folder-like interface integrated into the Windows Explorer file management program of Windows 95. At the beginning, MSN offered discussion and product support as well as basic e-mail capabilities, chat rooms, and message boards that were somewhat like newsgroups, and information regarding news and weather. Although originally the open access to the World Wide Web was not included in its service, in time Internet access could quickly be offered through the Internet Explorer web browser from Microsoft. This became available as a download from MSN service as part of the package Windows 95 Plus.

Just one year after its release, due to growing importance of and demand for the Internet, Microsoft saw themselves forced to come up with another version called MSN 2.0, after renaming its existing MSN service as MSN Classic. The new version combined access to the Internet with web-based multimedia content under the name MSN Program Viewer. In recent years, in the US and Canada, MSN is still a dial-up Internet service provider, yet it comes second after AOL. The MSN service is now accompanied by an e-mail account at MSN.com and security software – firewall, and anti-virus programs.

After the changes in 2006, many MSN services were renamed under the new brand name Windows Live. Among these services that underwent modifications, MSN Hotmail (now Windows Live Hotmail), MSN Messenger, MSN Search, (now Live Search), MSN Virtual Earth (now Live Search Maps), MSN Spaces, MSN Alerts and MSN Groups were included. Once Windows Live was released, new services were announced: Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner and Windows Live Favorites. At the same time, MSN switched to online news and entertainment as well as in the form of a common interest content provider through its Internet portal, MSN.com. Windows Live provides most of the company’s online software and services.

Popularity: 27% [?]