LONDON (Brand Republic) - Microsoft is planning to charge fees to use some of the services on its MSN internet portal, according to newspaper reports.
In an Independent on Sunday report, Microsoft鈥檚 UK managing director Neil Holloway said that advertising alone would not generate enough revenue. The company plans to add extra services to MSN, the most popular portal in the UK, and start charging within a year.
Analysts say that this could lead to other companies, such as Yahoo! and AOL, to also start charging for their services, which are currently free.
Holloway said that he believed users would be willing to pay about £60 a year for the extra MSN services. He emphasised that the core services, such as the web-based email service Hotmail, would remain free.
In other news, Microsoft is today attempting to overturn a US court ruling which said that the company abused its position to secure a monopoly in the internet software market.
The court ruled on June 8 last year that Microsoft should be split into two companies. Today, Microsoft will claim in the US Court of Appeals that this ruling was extreme, and that the judge was biased.
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