MSNBC is an American news cable and satellite television network that provides news coverage and political commentary from NBC News on current events. MSNBC is owned by the NBCUniversal News Group, a unit of the NBCUniversal Television Group division of NBCUniversal, all of which are owned by Comcast. MSNBC and its website were both founded in 1996 as a partnership between Microsoft and General Electric's NBC unit, hence the network's naming. Although they shared the same name,
msnbc.com and MSNBC maintained separate corporate structures and news operations, with
msnbc.com headquartered on the West Coast on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, and MSNBC in the NBC headquarters in New York. Microsoft divested its stake in the MSNBC channel in 2005, and divested its stake in
msnbc.com in July 2012. The general news site was rebranded as
NBCNews.com and a new
msnbc.com was created as the online home of the cable news channel.
