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Comment by credo | Hacker News Reader

In early 2005, before Microsoft announced the Windows Live brand, I was a Principal at Microsoft (and was told to keep the branding information a secret - not even my direct reports (senior dev leads) could be told about it)

At that time, it seemed like a big joke to me (because a lot of senior people seemed very excited about the changes - even though it just amounted to renaming MSN as Windows Live)

I suspect that a new crop of senior leaders at Microsoft are now talking abut how excited they at the latest change.

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I feel the same way. I like that they are consolidating, but part of this just feels like a new coat of paint. Further, I didn't see how this announcement fits with the Office365 identities. Are those now going to "Microsoft Accounts" as well? Or are those still Office365 accounts? Can I use Hotmail with them? What's the difference between Hotmail and Exchange Online? Can I migrate back and forth?

Unless something radically changed in the last 6 months, the two identity infrastructures are completely separate with one tenuous federation holding them together. And the two groups of products -- consumer and business -- will still be unnecessarily separate.

This happens at small businesses too. And, it's actually a lot sadder because truly nobody cares. At least MS will get some blog posts about people being confused or complaining. Small business execs who are hyped up for a re-branding usually don't even get that.

I work in biotech and this is rampant there - our company changed names three times before we ever had a product (or any revenue at all). These were not small name changes, either - they redecorated the entire office to the new company colors each time.

Somebody needs to justify his paycheck.

Too true - we also had a marketing department for an entire year before we had said product. Now I certainly understand that you need a marketing department before the product launches - but consider that at a time when development was in full swing (about three quarters before launch) we had two software developers and three marketing people.

Hysterical - I started to formulate a theory on this that leadership distracts themselves with these types of tasks just as a person might engage in avoidance. Of course, I'm about 56 years late: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality

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