Microsoft: Bing Rebranded to MSN Will be Available on iOS and Android
MSN is Built From the Ground up For a Mobile-First, Cloud-First World
For the last few days there were news that Microsoft is abandoning MSN, but in a surprise move, Microsoft is going all the way to give a face-lift to its MSN brand by introducing a new homepage and many Bing apps. The apps powered by Bing like the Weather, Finance, Sports, News, Travel, Health and Fitness and Food and Drink are available on Windows 8 and Windows phone will be re-branded to MSN. They are also in the process of making this available for all iOS and Android platforms in the coming months. According to Microsoft, it is a "Mobile-first, Cloud-first" vision. The move is to make a number of cloud services and apps available across all platforms.
In the past several years, Microsoft was in favour of Bing and Windows Live. Once again the company seems to have shifted its focus on MSN. The preview shown today was available to users in 55 markets at preview.msn.com.
The Corporate Vice President of Information and Content Services, Brian MacDonald in the blog post outlining the MSN news said that Information and personalized settings are roamed through the cloud to keep track with the users wherever they are. He also went on to add that once the favourites are set, preferences will be synchronised across all Microsoft platforms; MSN, Cortana, Bing and other Microsoft experiences.
MacDonald is also in-charge of the Bing Application Experience team to build apps and services for Windows 8, Windows Phone and Xbox. Some of the Bing applications like the OneNote, OneDrive and Bing Search are available on iOS and Android platforms, but these were not created by the Bing Application Experience team and will not be rebranded to MSN.
In 2007, Microsoft almost abandoned MSN.com and reprogrammed its content. In 2010, a new version of MSN was launched and was again revamped in 2012 to optimize it for the Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10.
However, over the years Internet Explorer had MSN.com as its default homepage and it is still very popular. According to Microsoft statistics, MSN has 437 million followers worldwide.
