MSN (2024)Copied

MSN launched in 1995 alongside Windows 95 as a subscription dial-up service and became the MSN.com web portal in 1998. For years it was the default home page in Internet Explorer and then Edge, and it is built into Windows 10 and 11 through the News and Interests and Widgets panels. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the name covered many Microsoft internet services, including MSN Messenger, MSN Hotmail and MSN Search, later replaced or renamed as Skype, Outlook and Bing, Windows Central recalled.

In September 2021 Microsoft rebranded many MSN services as Microsoft Start, a personalised news product that, according to Windows Central, had been intended as an 'everything app' along the lines of WeChat. MSN.com never fully went away, but articles redirected to the Start site.

In November 2024 users noticed the Microsoft Start site and Edge's new tab page carrying a new MSN logo. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Windows Central that the company was unifying its news content services under the MSN brand again. Start.com and MicrosoftStart.com began redirecting to MSN.com, and the Start apps on Android and iOS were rebranded. The new logo applies Microsoft's modern design language to the familiar MSN butterfly. WinBuzzer said Start had never gained the recognition of its predecessor, and read the reversal as Microsoft capitalising on a trusted, recognisable name while keeping features such as AI-powered personalised feeds.

Windows Central noted that MSN is still seen by millions of people a day.

Creative Bloq read the logo as a journey back in time. MSN first launched with Windows 95, and its name was gradually stripped from Messenger, Hotmail and Search, which became Skype, Outlook and Bing, while the news portal lingered with most content redirected to Microsoft Start. The 2014 redesign had dropped the colourful gradient wings for an entirely black butterfly; the new one brings colour back in Microsoft's contemporary design language. The magazine's point was that MSN, like AOL, still holds recognition that Start never earned. Sometimes the boldest rebrand is admitting the old name was better.

This is a rare, honest admission that a rebrand failed. Microsoft Start was a generic product name that nobody asked for, and the butterfly was a real asset with decades of memory behind it. The redraw is sensible and soft. The lesson is older than the logo: do not throw away a name people already know.