Thursday, May 04, 2006

Is it Windows Live, MSN, or Microsoft?

Jennifer Slegg at SEW reports that the upcoming MSN adCenter product has changed its name to Microsoft adCenter.

Jennifer asks, "With all search related products branded under the MSN name, why change MSN adCenter to Microsoft adCenter?" Danny Sullivan adds, "I guess the biggest surprise is that they didn't call it Windows Live adCenter."

Richard MacManus is a little more blunt, saying:
It's indicative of the general branding chaos that has been evident at Microsoft in recent times. From the MSN vs Live confusion, to the just announced re-naming of adCenter from MSN adCenter to Microsoft adCenter. At the very least it looks like MSN as a brand name is being, rather clumsily, ushered out the door.
See also my previous post, "Is it Live or MSN?"

See also Dare Obasanjo's post, "One of These is Not Like the Others".

Update: Now this is getting funny. Microsoft apparently decided to name two entirely different products "Windows Live Search", a move Mary Jo Foley calls "a new low, in terms of bad naming choices" and Todd Bishop labels the "George Foreman naming strategy".

2 comments:

RobotsThink said...

May be MS did what its good for.Copying the idea from somewhere and implementing it."Google Adsense" !

Scott said...

Microsoft has had some serious "naming" / "branding" issues over the past half-decade. Perhaps it's just too big a company, where the right hand doesn't know what the left's doing, or maybe it's just due to churn in the managerial levels?

In any event, the whole .NET thing is a prime example of naming back-and-forth from MS in the earlier part of this decade. (Visual Studio .NET ==> Visual Studio, VB.NET ==> VB, ASP.NET stays ASP.NET, etc. Plus in 2001/2002, they tacked on the .NET suffix to just about everything they shipped.)