???? – 2013retired
IGoogle
“Your homepage, your rules — the web tidied up, and somehow felt less like home.”
“Nudged us a thousand times, then signed off for good.”
MSN Messenger launched on July 22, 1999 and became the way a generation talked, at 330 million monthly active users by June 2009, one of the most widely used messaging clients on Earth. Everyone just called it MSN, even after Microsoft rebranded it Windows Live Messenger in 2005 — a name nobody used and everybody ignored. It even made peace with the competition late in life, playing nicely with Yahoo Messenger and Fa
After buying Skype in May 2011, Microsoft began easing Messenger out the door, and in 2013, under CEO Steve Ballmer, the service was discontinued in favor of Skype. The succession didn't stick the way the planners hoped — Skype itself was later replaced by Microsoft Teams. But for millions, the nudge and the buddy list live on somewhere warmer than any server log.
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“Your homepage, your rules — the web tidied up, and somehow felt less like home.”
“It held the door open to the web for millions, then politely showed itself out.”
“Thinner, lighter, and gone before we got tired of looking at it”