The home page taps the new MSN Local Edition to offer visitors a localized experience. Microsoft said the redesigned site with a bright look and feel began rolling out Wednesday and will become widely available to U.S. customers early next year.

"Both Yahoo and Microsoft have suddenly realized that their portal properties are incredibly valuable and they should invest in them," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. "Both companies got so focused on Google that they forgot they had these incredibly powerful sites that pull massive amounts of traffic. Traffic for both Yahoo and MSN has been going up steadily."

Cleaning Up the Clutter

Microsoft's research shows that 90 percent of surveyed consumers find home pages such as MSN valuable, and they like the convenience of a comprehensive site. But there is one pain point -- clutter. The surveys show people want less clutter and easier access to information and services they care about, including search.

"Now is the time to clean up the mess on the web -- people need less clutter and less hassle to find what matters most to them," said Erik Jorgensen, corporate vice president at Microsoft. "Microsoft is uniquely invested in search, media experiences, and technical innovation. Combining these assets to deliver our new MSN home page is a tremendous win for customers and advertisers."

The new MSN home page aims to cut through the clutter with 50 percent fewer links and a simplified navigation across news, entertainment, sports, money and lifestyle. The new page also integrates Bing and offers quick access to Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live services, local information, and in-line video.

Playing Up Bing

Bing is featured as the core search service throughout the home page in key areas such as shopping, travel and local, and as a way of highlighting hot topics, trends or people. To streamline the home page, the new design offers clear categories for news, entertainment and local information.

Microsoft said simplicity drove the clean integration of popular social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live "What's New," which aggregates up to 50 Web activities, including Yelp, Flickr, Pandora and more, onto the MSN home page. With the new design, Microsoft said, people no longer have to jump from site to site to update their status, tweets or see what their friends are up to.

"Customers told us they want the latest information from their favorite sources, their friends and the breadth of the Web -- and the new MSN home page delivers via a fresh new look and new features," Jorgensen said. "Today is an important transformation for MSN, and it's just the beginning."

Portal Staying Power

Enderle called the MSN.com redesign an impressive effort and a strategic investment that showcases a recognition that the consumer market hasn't moved away from portals. Microsoft hopes to drive even more traffic to MSN.com with the new design, and Enderle said that's a reasonable expectation.

"Internet users have not given up on portals, even though for a while the three primary portal vendors -- Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft -- did give up," Enderle said. "Now Microsoft and Yahoo are reinvesting. I guess it's the nature of things that sometimes change doesn't happen as fast as we think it will and sometimes things that we think are obsolete aren't."