MSN

:For other meanings of MSN, see MSN (disambiguation).

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MSN (or Microsoft Network) is an Internet service provider and web portal (initially meant to be a parallel net to the Internet) created by Microsoft on August 24, 1995, coinciding with the release of Windows 95. The MSN moniker has since been extended to Microsoft's Hotmail webmail service and the MSN Messenger instant messaging client, as well as other Microsoft-branded websites.

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With 9 million subscribers, MSN is the second largest Internet service provider in the United States behind Time Warner's America Online service with 26.5 million.

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According to Alexa, MSN.com is now the #2 most visited English website on the Internet, behind #1 competitor Yahoo!'s Yahoo.com, due in no small part to the page being the default home page for the Internet Explorer web browser.

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The word "MSN" has come to be synonymous with "MSN Messenger" in Internet slang. In other words people use phrases such as "I'll send it to you on MSN." To use MSN Messenger, the users must have a Microsoft Passport Network account.

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Personalised features on MSN require the use of a Microsoft Passport. These personalised features include My MSN and Hotmail.

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Internet service provider: An Internet service provider (ISP) is a business or organization that offers users access to the Internet and related services. Many but not all ISPs are telephone companies. They provide services such as Internet transit, domain name registration and hosting, dial-up access, leased line access and...

Web portal: A web portal is a web site that provides a starting point, a gateway, or portal, to other resources on the Internet or an intranet. Intranet portals are also known as enterprise information portals (EIP). The building blocks of portals are portlets, which contain portions of content published using...

Microsoft: Microsoft Corporation is the world's biggest software company, with over sixty thousand employees and a physical presence in over sixty countries as of 2005. It was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA. Microsoft develops, manufactures, lic...