Microsoft Live

What's wrong with Microsoft's Live initiative?

Hold that thought. Let's skip back a few years to the era of ".net". Do you remember how the next version of Windows (codenamed Longhorn, now officially Vista) was Windows.net? How the office.net website stated how all your documents would live "in the cloud" and be accessible from anywhere? Internally, hundreds of applications were renamed to "application.net".

.net, its annoying name aside, was simply Microsoft's common language runtime, supporting managed C++, C# and "VB.net", or better known as VB6 (maybe VB7?) Yet Microsoft took this name and tried to apply it to hundreds of different products; it became more of an amorphous brand than a concrete name for something. The end result? A lot of confusion.

Let's skip back to the present day. What's "live"? We have Windows Live Search. How is that different from msn search? We have Windows Hotmail Live. How is that different than Windows Hotmail, MSN mail, or just Hotmail? Microsoft has a branding problem.

They didn't have a branding problem when they released Word as a competitor to WordPerfect 5.2, which was the last commercial word processor I used other than Word. The secret? They called the program "Microsoft Word". Corel's name didn't appear anywhere. That's branding.

Unfortunately Microsoft is now so big they feel that branding things "Microsoft" doesn't provide enough differentiation. They want XBox to be their gaming brand. Everyone knows it's still made by Microsoft, but they like it a little better. I used to work in a ski shop, where everything we sold was separated by ski or snowboard. Goggles, sweaters, boots, you name it. Why? Because, supposedly, snowboarders felt more comfortable when they didn't have to look at ski stuff, and skiers could browse their $350 Dale of Norway sweaters without having to glance over $50 hoodies.

Personally, I can see the XBox brand, because it refers to the gaming system and its components. MSN was a fine brand too, for an internet provider. Now that Microsoft is branching out into the traditional "Web 2.0" things, they're looking for a different brand. Unfortunately "Live" is confusing because XBox Live already exists. Another problem is that MSN started morphing from the "ISP" brand into the "Internet" brand that Live is now trying to be with the release of "MSN Search". Finally, Live is being applied to Windows, as in "Windows Live". It's one thing to have a brand, but Microsoft is applying "Live" to everything left and right. Why not just leave it as "Microsoft"? It'll be a heck of a lot less confusing to customers, and a heck of a lot more effective.

Not surprisingly, I'm not the only one who feels this way.