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Microsoft to Terminate ‘Windows Live’ Brand

By on May 4, 2012 7:54 am

Microsoft said it will do away with 'Windows Live', a brand which has been a notorious confusion to customers.

Microsoft said it will do away with 'Windows Live', a brand which has been a notorious confusion to customers.

The Windows Live brand was intermingled with various Windows services, giving them new names and confusing long term users of Microsoft Windows. An example of this is ‘Windows Live Movie Maker’, a Windows video editor by the company. In previous versions, the software had simply been ‘Windows Movie Maker’.

Microsoft itself has admitted to the confusion the brand caused. Microsoft VP Chris Jones said online that, "Windows Live service and apps were built on versions of Windows that were simply not designed to be connected to a cloud service for anything other than updates, and as a result, they felt 'bolted on' to the experience. This created some amount of customer confusion."

The upcoming incarnation of Windows, Windows 8, has been highly controversial in recent times due to its addition of a smartphone style UI called 'Metro'. But clearly, simplicity has been a common theme in the preparation for future Windows operating systems. "Windows 8 provides us with an opportunity to reimagine our approach to services and software and to design them to be a seamless part of the Windows experiences." said Jones.

Such simplifications extend beyond the termination of Windows Live and the introduction of Metro. In the future, for example, all contacts and messaging will simply fall under 'People app' and 'messaging app'.

While Microsoft has been highly criticized for its interface in the upcoming Windows 8, it has also took flak in the past for being too similar to Macintosh operating systems. At least now, Microsoft is finally coming up with new ideas to revolutionize and individualize their operating system.

Source:InformationWeek

Brandon is an A+ certified technician and freelance writer living in East Tennessee. He loves God, writing, science (especially technology) and philosophy.
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