Microsoft Messenger service

On January 11, 2013, Microsoft announced that they were retiring the existing Messenger service globally (except for mainland China where Messenger will continue to be available) and replacing it with Skype. In April 2013, Microsoft merged the service into Skype; existing users were able to sign into Skype with their existing accounts and access their contact list. As part of the merger, Skype's instant messaging functionality is now running on the backbone of the former Messenger service.

Background

Despite multiple name changes to the service and its client software over the years, the Messenger service is often referred to colloquially as "MSN", due to the history of MSN Messenger. The service itself was known as MSN Messenger Service from 1999 to 2001, at which time, Microsoft changed its name to .NET Messenger Service and began offering clients that no longer carried the "MSN" name, such as the Windows Messenger client included with Windows XP, which was originally intended to be a streamlined version of MSN Messenger, free of advertisements and integrated into Windows.

Nevertheless, the company continued to offer more upgrades to MSN Messenger until the end of 2005, when all previous versions of MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger were superseded by a new program, Windows Live Messenger, as part of Microsoft's launch of its Windows Live online services.

For several years, the official name for the service remained .NET Messenger Service, as indicated on its official network status web page, though Microsoft rarely used the name to promote the service. Because the main client used to access the service became known as Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft started referring to the entire service as the Windows Live Messenger Service in its support documentation in the mid-2000s.

The service can integrate with the Windows operating system, automatically and simultaneously signing into the network as the user logs into their Windows account. Organizations can also integrate their Microsoft Office Communications Server and Active Directory with the service. In December 2011, Microsoft released an XMPP interface to the Messenger service.

As part of a larger effort to rebrand many of its Windows Live services, Microsoft began referring to the service as simply Messenger in 2012.