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Microsoft and NBC officially call it quits

The Internet partnership of Microsoft and NBC is officially over.

NBC News announced this evening that it had acquired full control of MSNBC.com from the software giant and was rebranding the site as NBCNews.com. NBC will continue to provide news content to MSN.com, a Microsoft news portal, which will reciprocate by sending traffic back to the network, NBC said.

For the short term, MSNBC.com will mirror the home page of NBCNews.com and eventually become the address of MSNBC TV.

"It'll have a new name and a new URL, but everything else will be … Read more

Microsoft producing series of Web shows

Watch out, Hollywood. Here comes Microsoft.

At an event it called Digital Showcase, held Thursday in New York, the software giant told a group of ad execs that it is getting into the business of producing original Web shows for its wide range of Web platforms.

According to MediaWeek, Microsoft told the ad execs that the shows it is funding will be naturals for supporting online advertising.

The shows are slated to run on portals like MSN, Xbox Live, and MSNBC.com. Among the initial series are: 50 Greatest, which MediaWeek said is "a spoof of the multiple pop … Read more