MSN losses force Microsoft to consider charges

NEWS The company has admitted that online advertising and click-throughs are not generating the levels of revenue that had been previously anticipated. The fee-based plan, due for rollout this year, would offer extra services, such as higher quality spam filtering, to MSN customers for an annual fee of £60. However, core MSN services including Hotmail will remain free. Microsoft invested £600,000 on a site overhaul last October in an attempt to maintain it's competitive edge against AOL and Yahoo! But despite 200 million visitors every month, analysts say the site is still making a loss.