MSNBC Becomes NBCNews.com As Microsoft & NBC Part Ways

As of last night, MSNBC is no more. Click your MSNBC bookmark, and you'll find yourself at NBCNews.com. NBCUniversal acquired MSNBC from Microsoft, officially splitting that 16-year partnership. The financial terms haven't been disclosed, but the site was quick to explain the nuts-and-bolts details to reader who discovered the new page this morning. The site cited brand alignment (among TV and Internet properties) as the reason for the move.

At the moment, MSNBC.com leads to NBCNEWs.com, but that is likely to change. NBCNews.com will be the address you'll visit for news, while MSCNBC.com will eventually point to MSNBC TV. That should clear up any confusion over the two news channels. Where MSNBC.com was driven by hard news, MSNBC TV is a commentary-driven outlet.

Now that the separation of Microsoft and NBC is on paper, the physical disentanglement begins. NBCNews.com expects the process of detaching itself from Microsoft completely to take as long as two years. MSN.com will receive news from NBCNews.com for that time, but it's also free now to get news from other sources and has already started hiring for an unnamed news project that it's starting later this year. Though Microsoft hasn't said specifically that the new project will involve Bing and Windows 8, MSN.com's general manager Bob Visse's comments to NBCNews.com that give us that impression.

Merging NBC News staff and MSNBC staff could be challenging, as the former is at Microsoft and the latter is in New York. NBCNews.com plans to model the transition on TODAY.com, which pulled together disparate organizations.