MSN UK to be closed later this year????

...What now for Overture UK and Looksmart UK

[4eyes]

[theregister.co.uk...]
and
[reuters.com...]

It seems that MSN no longer want a direct presence in Europe.

Implications anyone?

[4eyes]

<bump>

As I understand it this could mean the end of MSN UK as an ISP, a portal, and possibly the msn.co.uk search engine itself.

This will presumably have an pretty negative impact on Overture UK and Looksmart UK.

[tigger]

perhaps it's time to sell some of those shares, whats the point of paying for a Looksmart listing now! none

[Abrexa_UK]

I would think that the effect on BTLooksmart would be more damaging. Those UK searchers will have to go somewhere else instead... a fair proportion of which will visit other engines that use Overture UK results anyway.

However, one of the main reasons that people pay £175 for inclusion in Looksmart UK (the only reason?) is MSN.co.uk. Without it, the value for money of Looksmart is significantly reduced. It would still be worth paying for many businesses, but some smaller businesses would be looking at where else they can spend the money; perhaps on a Yahoo UK listing instead.

[Abrexa_UK]

tigger,
I think that there is still some value in BTLooksmart. Remember that it is not the same thing as Looksmart.com :)

It will still cover the ISPs in the UK - Tiscali, BT and NTL, as well as Alta Vista UK. That's a fairly good selection to power. Plus BTLooksmart gets some traffic itself.

It does mean that they will have to remove the 60% coverage boast though... MSN.co.uk would account for a significant proportion of that.

[tigger]

true but without the MSN listing I don't see any real value to paying for Looksmart.

I'm just so glad I didn't renew my PT pages :)

[boblington]

'MSN no longer want a direct presence in Europe' 'As I understand it this could mean the end of MSN UK as an ISP, a portal, and possibly the msn.co.uk search engine itself'.

Surely for a globally competitive market this would be suicide in terms of maintaining a strong prescence. Your average Joe Bloggs has only heard of/uses Lycos, MSN, Freeserve ,and maybe Excite in the UK. These are the only companies really spending any money in the traditional media and as such maintain visibility in the market. Hard to imagine MSN pulling out of the UK market.....

[webdiversity]

But it said it would like to tap into the European access market, developing revenue-sharing arrangements by which ISPs could use the popular MSN portal, which claims 35 million European visitors per month, as a start page for their access services.

Surely, this paves the way for the likes of Tiscali (who are already a BT Looksmart partner) to dramtically beef up their coverage across Europe ?

it may not be called MSN any more, and it will probably get more defections to Google, but it's nto as grim for BT Looksmart as it may initially appear. That's just my opinion, think I'll hold judgement, and keep the £175's for a few more months.

[Tim_Bell]

I have been seeing a decent amount of traffic recently from beta.uk.search.msn.com which suggests to me that they're not pulling their UK portal. Have there been any other developments since the last messages on this thread?

[GodLikeLotus]

The news story a "Reutars" seems to be unavailable, also I cannot find a mention of this at the BBC. Sounds a bit much though from where I'm sat, MSN are not just going to walk away from the UK now thats for sure, something or someone will use what they have.

[jamsy]

IMO i couldnt see them walking away from the uk even if it was making a small loss. They would want to keep their position and if they are making a loss they may start their own PPC and/or directory listing service.

[tigger]

I'm surprised they haven’t started their own PPC/PFI service too it has to be on the cards.

[gsx]

Highly unlikely in my opinion. Perhaps a radical change to earn them more money...now that sounds how MS normally work, and it wouldn't surpise me if they try the same again...

[Crazy_Fool]

i've just spoken to someone at overture uk and they said msn uk are definitely not closing down (for those who don't know, overture uk listings are shown on msn uk). whether we can take that as fact or not remains to be seen .......

[tigger]

well thats good news lets face it we need at least more SE in the uk other than google, but I wonder would Overture tell us the truth, I'd like to think so

[4eyes]

I hope they are right too.

Faults notwithstanding, they are a big traffic provider, known quantity, "better the devil you know" etc