This past weekend I had another desultory encounter with what some still believe is Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) interest in the "content" business. While trying to hook up to the Net a friend's ultralite laptop running Windows XP Professional, and bereft of the ubiquitous AOL (NYSE: AOL) software, I was taken on a tour of frustration as the preloaded Microsoft Network tried first to use a username it hijacked from another dial-up connection, then led me on a tedious and insanely slow walk through utterly irrelevant shopping and news links, none of which had anything to do with the Internet. I ultimately toasted the MSN connection and set up a third-party ISP account I had in my back pocket.

MSN won't make most people's experience of connecting to the Net very special. This is a network that doesn't care about being a network, like a supposedly hip restaurant that secretly yearns to be a car wash. And so it comes as no surprise that IDC has recently concluded MSN may soon give up on being an Internet access player. What is left after you jettison the dial-up part, the so-called "content" business, would leave MSN in the position of being a re-tread of C/Net's failed "Snap!" online service from five years ago.