Microsoft Start is Replacing Microsoft News
- Paul Thurrott
- Sep 07, 2021
-
24
Microsoft Start is a new personalized news feed that will be available across mobile, web, Windows 10, Windows 11, and Microsoft Edge.
Well, “new” in the sense that it is replacing Microsoft News. Which replaced MSN News. Which replaced Bing News. OK, it’s just a new name.
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“Microsoft Start is a personalized news feed and collection of informational content provides news from premium publishers, timely updates tailored to your interests, and is available when and where you want it,” Microsoft corporate vice president Liat Ben-Zur writes. “Microsoft Start will begin rolling out today and is conveniently available as a standalone website, as a mobile app on both Android and iOS, from the News and interests experience on the Windows 10 taskbar, from the Widgets experience in Windows 11, and from the Microsoft Edge new tab page.”
Based on the screenshots that Microsoft provided, Microsoft Start appears to take on the look and feel of the News and Interests/Widgets experiences in recent Windows versions, with colored, rounded rectangles of featured topics. But it also appears to be nothing more than a rebranded version of the current MSN and Microsoft News services, which haven’t proved to be of particularly high quality. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft Start will be any better.
For its part, Microsoft claims that Microsoft Start brings new technology to content experiences, “including Microsoft’s latest advancements in AI and machine learning, coupled with human moderation, to help people stay up to date with information that is personalized for their interests.” It features content from over 4,500 global premium publishing brands with over 1,000 partners, and is both curated and personalized, so you can tailor it to show you only what you want to see.
Microsoft also promises immersive experiences for things like hyper-local weather forecasts, traffic, the stock market, and sports scores. (In fact, those might be the topics that appear at the top of the feed in those colored boxes.)
Microsoft Start launches today. You can download the mobile app versions here.