Microsoft Net Moves Continue Apace
Major pieces of Microsoft Corp.’s 10-month-old strategy to position itself as a major power on the Internet are now falling neatly into place.
On Thursday, Microsoft will announce that Microsoft Network, the company’s ill-fated commercial online venture, will be reborn as an elaborate Internet site packed with news, magazines and a wide range of new entertainment offerings.
Last week, one of the most powerful new forces on the Internet, AT&T;, announced it would make Microsoft’s Internet Explorer the default browser for its Internet service.
And America Online and CompuServe, the leading online services that complained bitterly a year ago that MSN would dominate because of its prominent place within Windows 95, have now signed deals that make them Microsoft allies and place them on the Windows 95 desktop besides MSN on new PCs this fall.
On Friday, CompuServe began sending out the first of 2.5 million software packets that will be mailed to customers to help them switch to the Internet. Each includes a customized version of Internet Explorer.
Microsoft said these deals will help it battle archrival Netscape Communications, which maintains a dominant share of the market. Netscape shares, under pressure for months, tumbled $3.25 to $41.75 on Nasdaq on Friday in response to the AT&T; deal.
But despite the gains on the browser front, not everybody is convinced Microsoft will be as effective in offering news and entertainment on the Web.
The new MSN, which will be described in detail to reporters and analysts at a full day of seminars on Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus Thursday, will include a range of free and subscription-based offerings. Some services, including Mungo Park, an adventure travel site, and Slate, Michael Kinsley’s much-hyped magazine, are already available. Other new offerings, including more entertainment-based products, will go online in coming months.
To ease the frustration of long waits as pictures are downloaded from the Net, MSN will issue a CD-ROM packed with graphics that can be loaded onto the users’ computer or used in conjunction with the online service.
Much of the new programming for MSN will come from Microsoft Multimedia Productions, or M3P, a new Internet production house that executives say will offer a much different approach to Net entertainment.
But skeptics say Microsoft has a long way to go to gain credibility in the world of news. And when it comes to entertainment, many are not at all sure the Web has that much to offer.
“The Internet is about information,” said Nate Zelnick, a New Jersey-based analyst for new-media publisher Meckler Media. “It is clearly a deficient medium for entertainment.”
