Microsoft sites beat Google sites as MSN homepage redesign debuts
June saw Microsoft announce it was busy redesigning the MSN homepage. While it’s still a few months away from being rolled out to everyone, the new design has now made its debut. And the timing couldn’t be better, with Microsoft Web sites beating all comers, including Google, for total hours spent on them online.
Microsoft is undoubtedly best known for its operating systems, Office, and Internet Explorer. But its presence on the Web is also massive, thanks to Windows Live Messenger, MSN, and Bing.
Data from comScore shows that for September 2009, Internet users spent more time on Microsoft properties than any others. Overall, 1.2 billion users spent 27 billion hours online over the course of the month. This is a 24 percent increase on last year’s figure.
Microsoft Web sites accounted for 14.5 percent of the total minutes spent online worldwide during the month, with Windows Live Messenger accounting for 70 percent of that figure. Google sites came next, with 9.3 percent of the total minutes. Yahoo and Facebook came third and fourth respectively.
These figures come at a time when Microsoft is really starting to push its Web sites to the next level. We’ve already had Bing launch to great acclaim, and now the MSN homepage is undergoing its first redesign in almost a decade.
According to All Things D, some users in the U.S. are getting access to the new look now, with the rest of the world following early in 2010. Meanwhile, there’s a preview version located here.
The aims of the redesign are clearly to remove the clutter and overabundance of links, and to bring the portal bang up to date with Bing, Facebook, and Twitter taking center stage.
Everything is organized much more easily on MSN than before, with content being segregated into six main categories of News, Entertainment, Sports, Money, Lifestyle and the catch-all More. Even the logo (seen above left) has been updated to a more Web 2.0 design and it now fits in nicely with the Bing logo.
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November 8th, 2009
Windows will never capture the hearts of those who aren’t followers in technology. Microsoft still doesn’t innovate anything they just continue to take others idea and bully their way into a given industry.
November 9th, 2009
You serious bro..this article is the most bias article ever written.
You are acting like microsoft has a great web prescence when in reality they are terrible. google is smashing them in every domain..
the only good thing microsoft has is messenger..that is all
Windows OS > why not use a MAC
Internet Explorer > why not use Chrome, Safari, Firefox
Office > hello it’s called Google Docs
Bing > hahaha GOOGLE!
change your bias tone and wake up to some good websites and companies.
November 9th, 2009
Well Microsoft did make a great mouse. It never blue screened …lmao…