However, none of it holds a candle to IBM's mania for making everything "Websphere."
Also, Live was another Microsoft naming phase.
For me, the canary in the coal mine of ms naming is their messenger. Msn messenger, live messenger, Skype, Skype for business, Teams... I assume the next iteration will be named Azure Teams.
All the other ones are literally different products each. I expect different products to have different names.
Why there were so many messenger products is a different question. Anyone from Google wanna jump in and explain this one? ;)
After like 2013 I never used Skype again. Now everyone I know either uses Discord or Slack. Teams was at least the right direction for business focus but it seems they shoulda QAd it much more. I dont hear much positive about Teams.
The messenger naming example is also apropos because each successive generation of bad naming is also a generation of product that is measurably worse in some way. It goes to demonstrate the durability of software canaries!
Live is the one for gaming.
Outlook is the business one.
But the mail client on windows is not outlook, that’s just windows mail.
It surprises me that they didn't release 'Windows Live Office' in that era.
But if I type in Live.com, I'm redirected to the same page that says 'Outlook' but is actually outlook.live.com
So Hotmail is Outlook but Outlook is Live.com but Live.com itself is Outlook
We have a similar issue in education. First it was MSDN-AA, then DreamSpark, then briefly Microsoft Imagine. Now it's called Microsoft Azure Dev Tools for Teaching.
I learned just recently that Microsoft Visual Studio is completely different from Visual Studio Code.
But yes, dark times indeed.
.NET Passport went thru series of rebranding: Microsoft Passport, Windows Live ID and of course the current Microsoft Account. In some places they also tried to roll everything under MSN brand which later was replaced partially by Windows Live and then again, once they managed to combine their services, MSN applications were bundled with Windows 8 and 10 (News, Weather, Sports etc.). Not mention all GUI changes across the years...
Microsoft trying to figure out what's its brand identity it's like a kid who tries to combine a single image of various jigsaw puzzles sets, periodically smashing pieces together to fit
having to click the "start" button to shut down your computer is probably the most illogical one. and somehow it managed to stay that way for 15 years until someone got the bright idea to just but an icon there instead
"microsoft windows phone 7 series" was a mouth full compared to "apple iphone". luckily they changed that soon after but its crazy to think of the amount of people that were involved in that project and none of them spoke up about how stupid the name sounded
a recent one is the app "your phone". it just doesn't sound right. i imagine it would be even more awkward when someone has to search the term. "hey google, my your phone isnt working"
windows security centre changes its name every year. I could go on
The first time Win95 was started, a giant arrow pointed to the start button. It was rather discoverable.
Now Win8, I had to look up how to shut it down, the rtm version was a UX disaster.
On the "active" bandwagon, I forgot to mention Active Directory, which is kind of funny given that I spent the better part of a decade specializing in development and projects largely oriented around AD and ADFS, and which is maybe the only Active-branded thing still going strong.