Microsoft has finally waved goodbye to MSN News, the company’s news aggregating service. However, it is only the branding name that is going the way of the Dodo. Today Microsoft announced MSN News has been rebranded as Microsoft News across mobile apps and on MSN.com.
In terms of the latter, MSN.com will remain as the branding, but will be shown as being “powered by Microsoft News”. As for the company’s MSN News on iOS and Android, these will both now be known only as Microsoft News.
In terms of end users, this is essentially a rebranding and nothing more. However, Microsoft says the new service highlights its consolidation of tools and services into a single aggregating platform for news curation:
“Microsoft News represents the ways we keep people informed across the web, phone and PC, using our long-tested approach of curating news via publishing partnerships, human editors, and AI.
We work with more than a thousand premium publishers and more than 3,000 brands in all major global markets – like USA Today, The New York Times, FOX News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde, Die Welt, El País, BBC News, Kyodo News, and many more – to aggregate the best news, videos, photos and other content and deliver it, for free, to people all over the world.”
Update
By leveraging its AI and machine learning, Microsoft News gives users more personalization tools. The app can deliver news based on location, preferences, and interests. The app will take this information from other Microsoft services. For example, it will leverage Skype, Xbox, Outlook.com, and Microsoft Edge.
Microsoft News is the fruition of the updated MSN News app that was released in beta in Januruary. Interests will also be spread across devices, so Microsoft News will remember preferences across platforms. Readability improvements have been made, while Microsoft has also added a new dark theme to the app.
