MSN is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps provided by Microsoft.

The main webpage provides news, weather, sports, finance and other content curated from hundreds of different sources that Microsoft has partnered with.

[2] MSN is based in the United States and offers international versions of its portal for dozens of countries around the world;[3] its dedicated app is currently available for Android and iOS systems.

Microsoft's original news website (now NBCNews.com) which launched in 1996, was also tied closely to the Internet Start portal.

)[5] The relaunched MSN.com contained a whole family of sites, including original content, channels that were carried over from 'web shows' that were part of Microsoft's MSN 2.0 experiment with its Internet service provider in 1996–97, and new features that were rapidly added.

[10][11] MSN had an exclusive partnership with MSNBC.com for news content from 1996 until 2012, when Microsoft sold its remaining stake in msnbc.com to NBCUniversal and the website was renamed NBCNews.com.

[20] Many of MSN's services were reorganized in 2005 and 2006 under a new brand name that Microsoft championed at the time, Windows Live.

This move was part of Microsoft's strategy to improve its online offerings using the Windows brand name.

The company also overhauled its online software and services due to increasing competition from rivals such as Yahoo!

[21] Microsoft launched a completely rewritten and redesigned MSN website, making use of the company's modern design language, on September 30, 2014.

[6] The new MSN portal features a new version of the logo that follows a style similar to other current Microsoft products.

Much of the existing content on MSN was eliminated as the website was simplified into a new home page and categories, some of which have corresponding apps:[22] The top of the home page provides access to Microsoft services Bing, Outlook.com, Skype, Office Online, OneNote, OneDrive, Bing Maps, and Groove Music, as well as popular social media services Facebook and Twitter.

[6] Signing into MSN with a Microsoft account allows for personalized content to appear and to be synchronized across devices on the website and in the corresponding apps.

With the 2014 relaunch, MSN now supports responsive design and eliminates the need for a separate mobile website.

The redesign of MSN proved positive and helped increase traffic with an additional 10 million daily visitors after two months.

[28][29] In December 2014, the apps became available across all the other major mobile device platforms as well: iOS, Android, and Fire OS.

[30][31][32][33][34] The apps allow users a reasonable amount of freedom to decide which sources provide information.

Originally, each app brought a unified experience with the MSN website and synchronized preferences across devices.

It allows users to set their own personalized favorite topics and sources, receive notifications of breaking news through alerts, filter preferred news sources, and alter font sizes to make articles easier to read.

[39] MSN Money (originally MoneyCentral, then MSN Moneycentral, before being rebranded as MSN Money in the mid-2000s - prior to being relaunched as a spin-off of Bing Finance) allows users to set up lists of publicly listed companies to watch, follow certain corporations and receive stock updates, get the latest headlines regarding international markets, view real-time trading figures with a 30-minute delay, track their own personal finances, calculate mortgages, get information on bonds and other financial assets, and convert currency.

[50] MSN Food & Drink (originally named Bing Food & Drink) is a discontinued recipe app that offers news related to foods and drinks, a personal shopping list that synchronizes across devices and the web, and a wine encyclopedia that contains information on over 1.5 million bottles of wine, over 3.3 million tasting notes, and hundreds of cocktail recipes.

[60][61][62][63] Sports also allowed the user to view slideshows and photo galleries, look up information about individual players and fantasy leagues, and set and track their favorite teams by selecting various topics from the hamburger menu.

[72] Previously, Microsoft had acquired Farecast in 2008, a website in the computer reservations system industry that offered predictions regarding the best time to purchase airline tickets.

[78] In August 2015, MSN Travel flight search pages changed from being powered by Kayak.com to its competitor Skyscanner.

Previous versions of MSN apps that were bundled with Windows Mobile and early versions of Windows Phone,[79] as well as MSN apps for Android and iOS devices in the early 2010s, were primarily repositories for news articles found on MSN.com.

[86][87] Microsoft's world headquarters is in the United States, so the main MSN website is based there.