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Sino the times: MSN to pull Chinese portal

Products, not content, king

Microsoft's MSN China portal will farewell the Internet in June of this year, signalling a further withdrawal of the country's content presence in the Middle Kingdom.

The decision was first reported in Chinese media, according to Nikkei, with Redmond to pay more attention to hosting, Windows 10, and its R&D operation.

The announcement was made on cn.msn.com, putting June 7 as the cutover for the portal to quit offering its news, lifestyle and search services. It will redirect users to a Bing search bar (just in case users remember it) and a directory of Chinese sites.

As well as a refocus on products, Nikkei says local competition from Sina and Sohu, along with China's Great Firewall, were factors in the ecision.

Last year, Microsoft cut a deal with Chinese giant Baidu, which is now the default search engine in its Edge browser.

Baidu also became Redmond's Windows 10 distribution channel, offering a branded “Baidu Windows 10 Express”.

Like so many of its American peers, Microsoft has also been the subject of unfavourable official scrutiny from the Chinese government. There was a monopoly probe launched in 2014, which intensified earlier this year when the government asked Redmond to explain alleged problems with the data it had provided. ®

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