Microsoft News now has 550 million monthly readers

Back in 2018, Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft News, its "news engine" that powered its MSN.com website and mobile apps. Over the past couple of years, the company has updated this service across numerous platforms, including Windows 10 and mobile.

Now, Microsoft has revealed some interesting statistics about its news engine, including its plans for how to improve the service next.

In a blog post penned by Taroon Mandhana, Corporate Vice President, the company states that it is continuing to strengthen its partnership with news media ever since it stopped creating its own original content for MSN.com back in 2014. Since then, Microsoft exclusively focuses on curating - both via humans and algorithms - news content from publishers across the globe and combining it with advertisements to generate revenue for both parties.

To that end, the Redmond tech giant has now shared $1 billion in revenue with its 4500+ news industry partners since 2014. The service also has 550 million monthly readers spread across 180 countries, with news available in 31 languages. Over 170,000 pieces of news content are contributed by media partners daily around a wide range of topics. Mandhana went on to say that:

We’re constantly looking for new ways to empower the industry – be it through innovations that leverage AI to drive faster and more complete investigative reporting, helping newsrooms modernize their storytelling through the power of data journalism, reinventing our apps for new device categories like Surface Duo, or expanding our platform to include news and content for emerging verticals, like eSports. Most importantly, we’re deeply investing in our core platform and distribution partnerships to ensure that our publishing partners’ world-class content can reach more people, on more devices, in more languages and geographies than ever before.

Microsoft states that it is aware that "empowering a free, trusted, well-funded news industry is critical to moving the world forward", and it remains committed to promoting high-quality news content and returning revenue to its publishers.