MSN used to be this special variation of Internet Explorer on Windows during the early era of the internet. My grandmother used it and the rebranded browser was packaged with other software products (if I recall correctly, I could be conflating it with preinstalled trash back in the day). It had a different color theme and allowed you to log into your hotmail account. I think at one point it became an IE addon.
I remember it revolved around giving you the news and maybe even loading hotmail with a special ui button. I have a foggy memory of it, but this MSN forum thread confirms the MSN Explorer existed[0].
You could even build a personal home page of sorts with the weather.
Any ways it had a following of people who got their news and it still exists in some form today. I know the website msn.com always catered to news stories, but I don’t know if they were always reposted if they once had writers. I think it’s always been some sort of data harvesting/media credibility facade news-focused branch of Microsoft.
Well the truth is Microsoft branding is totally incoherent, and MSN has been anything and everything MS thought they could put their name on. Like there is a cable network called MSNBC which now has nothing to do with either MS or NBC.
Originally, like Bill Gates wrote about it in a book completely ignoring web browsers, MSN was a proprietary Windows client like AOL. Later on it became a 'web portal' like Yahoo. Then a 'content' site. At one point, it was even a social media site. Somehow, when my parents got cable internet, they were funneled into a @MSN.com account. It had this fake "dialer" which pretended it was "connecting", even though the internet was always on.
For many years since, MSN has just been the tabloid news to remind you that Microsoft shit is low class.
No idea what kind of deal these places have with Microsoft.