Bell Canada and Microsoft ended their joint Sympatico-MSN.ca portal in 2009 and launched separate Sympatico.ca and MSN.ca sites on September 1. They did not end all cooperation: a new three-year agreement kept selected search, referral-traffic and advertising arrangements in place. The split separated portal operations, not every commercial tie.
How the Sympatico-MSN partnership began
Bell Canada and Microsoft launched Sympatico-MSN.ca on June 9, 2004. Bell described it as one portal bringing together MSN Canada features and internet tools with Sympatico.ca broadband content and services. Bell Canada’s launch announcement framed the site as a joint destination.
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What changed in September 2009
The companies moved from one joint portal to two independent sites: Sympatico.ca and MSN.ca launched on September 1, 2009. The former joint address, Sympatico.msn.ca, was to redirect permanently to Sympatico.ca, according to their announcement of the new arrangement.
What the companies kept—and what they stopped sharing
| Area | Joint portal arrangement | Separate portals from September 2009 |
|---|---|---|
| Portal operation | Sympatico and MSN features and services were combined in one portal. | Bell and Microsoft operated Sympatico.ca and MSN.ca independently. |
| Content | Content was shared within the joint portal. | The portals no longer shared content. |
| Search | The joint portal used the arrangement then in place; the sources do not specify its search terms. | Both portals were to use Bing search under the new agreement. |
| Traffic referrals | The sources do not specify a referral arrangement. | Each site could refer visitors to the other in selected areas. |
| Advertising | The sources do not specify the inventory terms of the old arrangement. | The companies continued selling Windows Live Hotmail and Messenger ad impressions and split display-ad inventory. |
| Agreement term | The joint portal had operated since 2004; its specific term is not stated. | The new cooperation agreement was for three years. |
The referral approach let each company direct visitors to the other where it had a stronger offering. For example, Sympatico.ca would send people looking for games to MSN.ca rather than compete with Microsoft’s Games Zone. Network World’s 2009 account described the companies’ new balance of cooperation and competition.
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Why they separated
Executives described the decision as a response to changed strategy and business conditions, not simply a technical redesign. The subscription revenue stream had not developed as expected, while online advertising had become more strategically important to Microsoft and Bell wanted to remain in online media.
Microsoft Canada vice-president Owen Sagness said the previous arrangement no longer aligned with Microsoft’s strategy, was not a good economic deal and was less efficient to operate. Those are the company’s stated assessments, as reported at the time; they are not an independent financial audit. The Globe and Mail’s report covered the rationale.
What “friends” meant in practice
The companies still expected to compete for advertising while collaborating in selected areas. Bell vice-president of Sympatico.ca Gary Anderson described the relationship as: “We will be fighting for ad dollars … but it’s a co-opetition.” Network World reported that the partners were splitting roughly 4 billion display ad impressions, attributing the figure to Anderson. That is a contemporaneous reported figure, not a current audience measurement or an independently verified count.
Did Sympatico.msn.ca disappear?
That question was already being asked before the split. In April 2009, TVA Nouvelles published the headline “Sympatico.msn.ca va-t-il s’éteindre?” (“Will Sympatico.msn.ca disappear?”). At that point, the outlet reported that the alliance was due to end in June; Microsoft said negotiations were ongoing and declined to speculate about the outcome. The eventual September launch of separate portals answered the question operationally: the joint portal ended, while its old address was set to redirect to Sympatico.ca. TVA Nouvelles’ April 2009 report captured the uncertainty before the announcement.
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The available contemporaneous reports establish the new agreement’s three-year term and the cooperation it covered. They do not establish what happened after that term, nor the current status of either portal or any named service. The split should therefore be understood as the 2009 change in the Bell–Microsoft portal partnership, not as evidence about their present-day operations.
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