Has MSN's time come?

Plotting the counter-offensive
The burden of that success, as the theory in the book goes, makes it harder to respond to the next generation of tech innovators. Years ago, Microsoft and Apple rattled IBM. Now Google, some believe, has a chance to rattle Microsoft by providing a cheaper, easier-to-use alternative. "Every other time Microsoft was attacking from below," said one former executive. "Now (Microsoft) is being attacked from below and they don't know how to deal with it."

The Microsoft reorganisation makes it clear just how seriously chief executive Steve Ballmer and chairman Bill Gates take that threat — even if they won't exactly say it. "We've had lots of competitors in their honeymoon phase," Gates said about Google in a recent interview. "But I'd say, in some ways, this is the biggest honeymoon I've ever seen."

Yet MSN's new prominence makes it clear that Redmond is focused on bringing a Web platform closer than ever to the operating system, analysts said.

MSN could be what Windows could never be: a Net platform that allows developers to write and distribute their code quickly. Patches and upgrades that take weeks or longer to distribute with traditional software can be done overnight, simply because they're all under the same umbrella. By comparison, the successor to Windows XP, introduced in 2001, isn't due until next year.

Redmond's grip loosening
In fact, MSN has already been used as a vehicle for shipping Windows features, said Rob Helm, director of research at the research firm Directions on Microsoft. The search service in Windows Vista, for example, shipped earlier as MSN Desktop Search. In addition, Internet Explorer features, like tabbed browsing, and protection against phishing — in which online scammers entice unwitting Internet users to log on to fake Web sites that steal their information — shipped first through MSN, Helm added.

Not all that long ago, Microsoft execs were saying Internet Explorer updates were inextricably tied to Windows updates. But the most recent version of the browser will ship ahead of Windows Vista so, some analysts believe, Microsoft could keep pace with Mozilla.

"MSN has become, bit by bit, a...

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