Microsoft Brings A 20th Century Icon Into The 21st

Posted by Tony Cardone in Featured Articles, Windows on Nov 5th, 2009 | View Comments

Microsoft’s got a lot going for it lately. Windows 7 came out to resoundingly positive reviews, the gaming division posted a second-straight year of profit, and several promising brands (Surface, Windows Phone, Zune) show that the company stuck its middle finger up to the economic climate and pushed forward. Perhaps most surprising for the company, however, was the introduction of the Bing search engine earlier this year. While it hasn’t eaten any notable share of big G, it’s also been received with generally positive reviews and has increased the value of the Microsoft search division.

So it was only a matter of time until someone in Redmond logged onto MSN and went “dear god, what is this?” After what seems like ages, MSN is getting a notable redesign. And not just a few more widgets as with the last update, but a full-fledged redesign. I absolutely love it. It’s got just about the same amount of content, but it’s so cleanly organized and isn’t obtrusive like it used to be with ads. The slight hint of Facebook and Twitter line the bottom corner, but unlike some websites, the site doesn’t center around the social networking services. Instead, the page is complimented by the services. Also added is a “Local Edition”, which puts everything regional on one clean page. It’s what a local news outlet’s site should look like- clean, locally centric, and, most importantly, popup ad free.

Sadly, for the other beacon of the Internet Age, AOL’s page is still the definition of web portal. Relentless promotion of AOL services, several sections that aren’t functional without logging in, and poor local integration. Yahoo, the other still-halfway-relevant web portal, has cleaned up its act a bit, but the page’s roll out options are way overdone. In their defense, however, most of the third-party site integration is hidden behind those roll outs, and the rest of the page is typically good stuff. However, looking at MSN’s new look, both AOL and Yahoo! look like dinosaurs. If you’ve moved to iGoogle because it was embarassing to open up to MSN, give the new page a bit of browser time today. Even if it’s just in celebration over Firefox finally surpassing IE6 in market share. Welcome to the 21st Century, MSN.com.

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