One would almost think they are having a laugh, but no it’s for real (I don’t think are intentionally trying to coming which such comically stupid naming policies).
I can’t think of a single company worse at naming products and services than Microsoft. They have an abysmal track record. Some examples off the top of my head, all of which make web searches near-impossible:
- They renamed Office 365 to just “365” (and then “365 Copilot”). The mind boggles.
- They named their light extensible code editor “Visual Studio Code”, despite the fact that they had a long-established IDE (for code) called “Visual Studio”.
- They called their application framework “the .NET framework”.
- They called the replacement framework “.NET Core”, and after a few major versions, changed to calling it “.NET”, but it’s totally distinct from the .NET framework.
- They called their ninth major desktop operating system “Windows 7”, then followed up with “Windows 8” and… “Windows 10”.
- Their web-powered replacement for Outlook is called “New Outlook”.
- They recently renamed their Remote Desktop app “Windows App”. I have no words.
Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Yeah, sometimes I wonder if they do these bad names for the free publicity of people complaining about them. But then there’s plenty examples where the name isn’t just clunky, but rather actively confusing for potential users…
JordanZ@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My favorite is still Microsoft Zune… Which was a music store, music subscription service, a desktop app, and a physical media player.
It’s like they want their stuff to literally be unsearchable on the internet. Renaming Remote Desktop to Windows App is a prime example of this. Good luck trying to search for that and get what you want.
Kyre@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You all have no idea the idiocy of their naming and the confusion it causes with their business software: Microsoft Dynamics - This is an array of business software. Some of it is the same core platform with different features but many of the applications are acquisitions and run on different back-end platforms.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Customer relationship Management). They originally named their software to be the name of what it actually does. Not a bad idea so when people searched for that name, results would point to their software eventually. This is their Salesforce competitor.
After building market and name recognition and gaining market space, they renamed it to Dynamics Customer Engagement. Then soon after split the product into modules or sub-products and called them: Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service (which was a module acquired by Microsoft but was originally called field one sky), Dynamics 365 Project Operations (which was originally called Project Service Automation).
They had MDM (Microsoft Dynamics Marketing) which was an email marketing platform. This MDM is not to be confused with MDM (Mobile data management) but was actually just the first iteration of their marketing tool. They re-wrote it from scratch and called it “Dynamics Marketing”. They then re-wrote it a third time (they are in the process of finishing the re-write) and it is now called “Microsoft Dynamics Customer Insights and Journey’s”. A name that just rolls right off the tongue.
Accounting Software Microsoft GP - This was a Microsoft software acquisition of accounting software called “GP”. Microsoft has been the steward of this project for a very long time but it is currently being phased out and is in end-of-life. Microsoft SL - Another acquisition. Accounting software called Solomon. Microsoft still sells and support this software. It serves a particular niche. Microsoft F&BO - This is a complicated one so I am just going to map out the names of what it was and what it has become but this is Microsoft’s SAP/Oracle competitor for large organizations: Axapta -> Dynamics AX -> Dynamics Finance and Operations (F&O) -> Dynamics Finance and Operations and Supply Chain -> Dynamics Finance and Business Operations (F&BO) Microsoft BC - Microsoft Business Central was originally acquired by Microsoft as “Navision”. They renamed it Microsoft NAV and more recently re-wrote and re-named it to Microsoft Business Central (BC).
Long post but they really just suck at names and rename things constantly. From the business side, I think it’s intentional as it causes people to re-evaluate the software without any baggage from the name.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
There’s also Microsoft PowerBi. Just a wonderfully descriptive name.
BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Remember when they named their voice assistant after a video game character?
smeg@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
That was probably one of their most sensible naming decisions
TheBat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You forgot about Teams (New)
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I have Teams (New) as well as New Team’s
Teams (New) is the next version of teams except I literally don’t know what they’ve done because I can’t see any difference.
New Teams appears to be a totally different project except again it looks identical but the calendar is different, they’ve actually managed to make the calendar worse, which is impressive since it was pretty goddamn unusable to start with.
I don’t understand why they have two development strands going on simultaneously.
Wispy2891@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You mean Teams or the other incompatible Teams, with the colors inverted on the icon?