One of the most ambitious marriages of technology and traditional media that began 16 years ago has officially come to an end. Comcast, the parent company of NBC News, has purchased the remaining 50 percent stake in MSNBC.com owned by Microsoft, giving the cable giant full control of the site.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the New York Times said the buyout price tag was $300 million. According to NBC News, the site's operations will remain in Seattle, housed at a new NBC News location to be determined. The only remaining relationship between the two companies with regards to the site will be for advertising sales, which Microsoft will continue to handle for the time being.

Looking to shore up its own news interests, Microsoft has already begun hiring staff for its MSN.com news site scheduled to launch in the fall. "If you start thinking about what we're going to be doing in Windows 8 and the Bing app and what we're going to be doing...across the multiple platforms, it makes a lot of sense for Microsoft," Bob Visse, general manager of MSN.com, said in a statement. "We're talking about using technology and using data to solve information delivery and news delivery in new and innovative ways… It's really difficult for us to do that when we have an exclusive, single-source relationship with one news provider."

MSNBC.com launched in 1996, along with the cable television network, a would-be challenger to the likes of CNN. But as the years passed, it has faced challenges from networks like Fox News, which also launched in 1996.

In 2005, Microsoft sold a 50 percent stake in the cable network to NBCUniversal. Now, Microsoft has decided to fully divest itself from the MSNBC experiment by offloading its shares in the website as well.

According to NBC News, online analytics company comScore tracked 49.9 million visitors to the site in the month of June. Visitors to MSBC.com are currently being redirected to NBCNews.com, but the company plans to give the network its own dedicated site in the near future.