Microsoft Pulls Out of MSNBC

Tech giant Microsoft announced that it is pulling out from a joint venture agreement with MSNBC.com. This means that Microsoft can now pursue its own online news service. 

The announcement was made last Sunday and officially dissolves the 16-year partnership between NBC News and Microsoft. NBC News is now owned and managed by Comcast Corp. 

According to sources, NBC would buy Microsoft’s 50-percent stake in the news website. The former MSNBC.com will now be named as NBCNews.com. Both parties refused to say how much the buyout went. 

The website will also move to New York, where NBC News has its headquarters. 

Its readers, however, need not worry about memorizing and bookmarking the new website as they will be automatically redirected to the new NBCNews.com. 

Industry analysts say that the dissolution of the partnership arose from the two parties’ desire to have greater control over the future of the online news service. Because of the agreements in the partnership, however, both Microsoft and NBC are hindered to make the necessary projects.

One example is that Microsoft is required to feature MSNBC.com content on its websites. According to MSN.com general manager Bob Visse, the limitation of using only MSNBC.com content proved to be problematic as the company also wanted to get content from multiple sources. 

Now that Microsoft and NBC News have parted ways, the tech giant can now push for its own online news service. Visse declined to comment on the details but he said the news staff would have about 100 people that would create original content. 

The new online news service of Microsoft would directly compete with Yahoo and AOL.