Bell first entered discussions with Microsoft in 2003 when the online media business in Canada was still very small and roughly worth $500 to $600 million, Anderson explained. "It made sense at the time to put the two portals together to drive the market faster, to increase the profitability of both companies in the short run and to leverage ... subscription revenue," he said.

But the subscription revenue stream didn't pan out, the portal business grew and strategies changed. The online media business became a top strategic priority for Microsoft and Bell wanted to remain in it, so the companies began discussing how they could structure a new partnership that was a win-win for both, Anderson explained. "I think that's what we've done," he said.

Coming out of the dot-com bust, Microsoft thought the Internet advertising market was dead and we should monetize our Internet audience through subscription-based services, said Sagness. "That turned out not to be true," he said.

"We gave up a lot of control and we gave up a majority of the revenue from an advertising revenue stream in order to get more subscription services ... We were in an arrangement with Bell where Microsoft was providing the majority of the advertising impressions," he said.

"Advertising is certainly a much bigger part of our strategy today as a company, but also the agreement we had with Bell just wasn't strategically aligned and it wasn't a good economic deal for us and given it was a very unique business model that we had in Canada, it was also operationally less efficient," said Sagness.