MSN Europe partners with German site
C|Net | at | by Mike
MSN Europe, Microsoft's Internet services unit, signed a partnership with major German content provider Tomorrow Focus on Tuesday that could bring it 3 million more visitors and a No. 2 popularity ranking. Eight leading Web sites, ranging from news to cinema, will become part of the German MSN Web site. Total revenue from advertising on the German MSN site will be shared between the two companies.
Microsoft said the deal was "a very tight partnership" needed to take on archrival T-Online. "T-Mobile is such a dominant force in Germany that we had to do something radical," MSN's European sales director, Chris Dobson, told Reuters. MSN, owner of Hotmail, the world's most popular Web-based e-mail service, claims a No. 1 position in some seven European countries. MSN expects that Tomorrow Focus' online readers will raise the number of unique MSN visitors to 14 million a month from 11 million. The number of page views could hit 400 million, making it the second-largest site in Germany, beating America Online.