Microsoft brings back the MSN in Edge, 3 years after rebranding it to Start

Microsoft has decided to return the iconic MSN brand by reintegrating it into its news services, effectively replacing the modern ‘Microsoft Start’ it introduced a few years ago.

The change means that the web homepage and apps that were previously under the Microsoft Start banner are now once again branded as MSN, complete with the old-school butterfly logo updated for the modern era.

Last week, users noticed a new MSN logo in Microsoft Edge, making many believe the old MSN is returning. Articles on the Microsoft Start website were also redirecting to MSN.com, signaling that Microsoft was in the process of rebranding its content services as MSN.

The return of MSN isn’t a complete surprise. Microsoft never entirely killed off the MSN brand, with the MSN.com homepage remaining online even after Microsoft rebranded many MSN services to Microsoft Start in 2021. Still, the return to MSN marks a complete reversal of Microsoft’s previous decisions, with Microsoft pulling back content services from the Microsoft Start branding and to MSN.

It’s not clear if Microsoft will rebrand the Microsoft Start apps on iOS and Android as MSN, but the content served within those apps is likely to be rebranded as MSN.

Microsoft first introduced Microsoft Start—then called Microsoft News—in 2019. In 2021, Microsoft expanded it into a platform for multiple types of content, including news, games, and video, with the goal of making it a super app that could handle any media.

MSN was first launched in 1995 and was once synonymous with the internet for many people. In the 90s and 2000s, MSN was also the brand used for many of Microsoft’s consumer internet products, including MSN Messenger (later Windows Live Messenger), MSN Hotmail (later Windows Live Hotmail and Outlook.com), and MSN Search (later Live Search, Windows Live Search, and eventually Bing).

Today, MSN is a news aggregator website and a suite of MSN-branded apps for weather, money, sports, and more. The MSN.com homepage is still the default in Microsoft’s Edge browser, and users can access MSN services directly from the Windows 10 and Windows 11 Taskbar.