The Microsoft Rebrand Registry

Is Microsoft's constant name changing done for two main reasons?

1) This creates the illusion of new products and helps drive investors and their stock.

2) Reputation is not good and they are trying to rebrand the same bad solutions.

Every time I get the questionnaire of _would you recommend Y to others_, the answer is always _NO_. _You have to pay me to use your products and solutions. There are so many better 3rd party solutions out there._

I find it funny the number of people in corporate IT that only use Windows at work and use Linux, BSD, or MacOS at home.

I used to work for Microsoft, and the marketing teams would regularly change the name of products days before big announcements and tradeshows like Build and Ignite.

Of course, they couldn’t tell anyone who needed to know ahead of time, because it was a “PR Moment” and leaks would upset the news media attention.

But the practical effect was that I’d be on the show floor and customers would come up and ask to see “Microsoft Turquoise AI for Haberdashery” and I’d be like “WTF is that??” and they’d say “The thing Satya just announced at the keynote” and I’d be like “employees aren’t allowed in the keynote can you explain what it does” and they would and I’d say, “oh, that’s the old Microsoft Designer for Clothes, I can tell you about that” but then I’d find all the demos I have aren’t relevant anymore because the name has changed and the PMs weren’t given any time to redo them with the new branding, and I can’t give a live demo because the UI has changed completely and I haven’t been trained on it.

This happened EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

It's missing a few bafflingly obvious ones

Surface (the table) became PixelSense, and Surface became tablets/etc

Windows Mobile became Windows Phone

Microsoft Remote Desktop became Windows App

No entry for MS Communicator / Lync / Skype for Business / Teams lineage

This doesn't even include the names that are just confusing and inconsistent:

2001 Xbox

2005 Xbox 360

2010 Xbox 360 S

2013 Xbox 360 E

2016 Xbox One S

2017 Xbox One X

2020 Xbox Series X

A confusing rename means you the customer can't understand the product line and your large enterprise must have more conversations with Microsoft to clarify. Such conversations then become sales opportunities.

That plus the resume-building "I launched the new product XYZ!" ... when 90% of the code base was the same are the two dynamics I see at play.

This reminds me of https://renameforce.com/ which tracks all the name changes for salesforce products