Whatever happened to MSN dial-up?
You may remember some years ago with the advent of Windows 95, that one of those hard-to-get-rid-of windows was the one that suggested signing up to MSN dialup to get connected to internet. In fact the procedure worked quite well, with a list of proposed dial up numbers. It was rather an expensive service and I guess that’s why it petered out, but with hindsight its quite interesting to note that Microsoft never insisted on being an ISP and didn’t follow its usual strategy of investing billions in order to ensure market leadership. They have been happy to relegate MSN to a sharing network, even MSN groups,now defunt for a good while has not bothered them.
Is this somewhat surprising? Of course in the interim they fought and lost the battle for most dominant browser, but what was it that brought them out of the dialup, if not the online storage market?