AllThingsD » Windows Live Mail

Giving 'Ribbon' Its 'Classic' Look

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:48:52 +0000

I believe that the Microsoft Office 2007 “Ribbon” user interface is one of the great abominations in the history of personal computing. Are you aware of any workaround that can restore the “classic” interface that was used in prior versions?

Microsoft (MSFT) didn’t offer an option to replace the 2007 Ribbon interface–which is intended to group functions more logically and make them easier to find–with the classic menus and toolbars. However, a number of third-party companies offer add-in programs that do so. You can find these by simply doing a Google (GOOG) search for “Office classic menu.” I haven’t tested these, so I can’t recommend any particular one. Note also that, in the newer Office 2010, Microsoft has introduced the ability to customize the Ribbon, so your favorite commands are clustered in your own personalized tabs. More information on this is at: http://bit.ly/aTS05D.

A low-tech answer to a reader’s question on the AT&T MicroCell tower.

Is there any way to turn the AT&T MicroCell on and off so that I don’t have a mini cell tower constantly blasting radio waves around the house?

Sure. You can simply unplug it, by pulling the power adapter out of the back. But be aware that it won’t restart instantly when you plug it back in. It takes much longer for the MicroCell to re-establish its network and GPS connections than it takes for a standard Internet router to come back to life after being turned off.

I am buying a new laptop primarily to send email and to surf the Internet. Are there any worthy alternatives to Outlook so I don’t have to spend a lot for Outlook or a bunch of Microsoft Office programs I won’t need or use?

There are some decent free alternatives. One, from Microsoft itself, is called Windows Live Mail, and can be downloaded free at http://bit.ly/baYTM3. Another, also free, is Mozilla Thunderbird, at http://bit.ly/2zxpYm. Or you could just use free Web-based email programs, like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Hotmail.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Microsoft Comms Head Smacks Back by the Numbers (Plus a "Rocky"-Inspired Internal Email!)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:33:09 +0000

After what he considered weeks of unfair press coverage and running down of Microsoft (MSFT), the software giant’s Corporate VP of Corporate Communications, Frank Shaw, posted a pugnacious corporate blog entry today that trotted out some impressive numbers about Microsoft’s business.

Of course, he also took the opportunity to put up some not-so-much figures about competitors such as Apple (AAPL), Netflix (NFLX), Salesforce.com (CRM) and, of course, Google (GOOG).

My favorite dig is the stat on the “percent chance that Salesforce.com CEO [Marc Benioff] will mention Microsoft in a speech, panel, interview, or blog post.” The answer, natch: 100!

As it turns out, that was a follow-up to a very sharply worded letter Shaw sent out to communications teams across Microsoft (MSFT) earlier this month, obtained by BoomTown, in which he noted at the start:

“It has been a rough couple of weeks for us from a coverage standpoint. It seems like every time I turn on the computer, or talk to a reporter, or pick up a publication at home, or do a scan of my RSS feeds or Twitter client that I see more stories and opinions about the challenges we have, and how great some of our competitors are doing. iPad this, Droid that, sheesh.”

Sheesh? Who says that anymore?

Still, I like his gumption in using it! Thus, Shaw–who is an active blogger and Twitter poster–is apparently mad as heck and not going to take it anymore!

Here’s the blog post below, followed by the internal email Shaw sent (apparently inspired by the landscape at our eighth D: All Things Digital conference earlier this month):

Microsoft by the numbers

25 Jun 2010 12:30 PM

You probably saw the news this week that we’ve sold 150 million Windows 7 licenses in 8 months. That’s more than 600,000 per day. And, perhaps fittingly for a product called Windows 7, it adds up to 7 copies every second of every day since launch.

As a communications guy, I’m generally most comfortable with words. But since Microsoft is a pretty numbers-driven company, the Windows 7 milestone got me thinking about some *other* numbers, too.

Of course, numbers are only one dimension of a story. And we live in a hyper-competitive industry, with loads of challenges to go along with loads of opportunity. All the same, with Windows 7, Office 2010, Bing, Xbox 360, Kinect, Windows Phone 7, our cloud platform, and many other products, services and happy customers, 2010 is shaping up as a huge year for us.

So, without further ado, a few of my favorite numbers:

1

150,000,000
Number of Windows 7 licenses sold, making Windows 7 by far the fastest growing operating system in history.[source]

2

7.1 million
Projected iPad sales for 2010. [source]

58 million
Projected netbook sales in 2010. [source]

355 million
Projected PC sales in 2010. [source]

3

>10
Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2008. [source]

96
Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2009. [source]

4

0
Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in November 2009.

10,000
Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in June 2010. [source]

700,000
Number of students, teachers and staff using Microsoft’s cloud productivity tools in Kentucky public schools, the largest cloud deployment in the US. [source]

5

16 million
Total subscribers to largest 25 US daily newspapers. [source]

14 Million
Total number of Netflix subscribers. [source]

23 million
Total number of Xbox Live subscribers. [source]

6

9,000,000
Number of customer downloads of the Office 2010 beta prior to launch, the largest Microsoft beta program in history. [source]

7

21.4 million
Number of new Bing search users in one year. [Comscore report--requires subscription]

8

24%
Linux Server market share in 2005. [source]

33%
Predicted Linux Server market share for 2007 (made in 2005). [source]

21.2%
Actual Linux Server market share, Q4 2009. [source]

9

8.8 million
Global iPhone sales in Q1 2010. [source]

21.5 million
Nokia smartphone sales in Q1 2010. [source]

55 million
Total smartphone sales globally in Q1 2010. [source]

439 million
Projected global smartphone sales in 2014. [source]

10

9
Number of years it took Salesforce.com to reach 1 million paid user milestone. [source]

6
Number of years it took Microsoft Dynamics to reach 1 million paid user milestone. [source]

100%
Percent chance that Salesforce.com CEO will mention Microsoft in a speech, panel, interview, or blog post.

11

173 million
Global Gmail users. [source]

284 million
Global Yahoo! Mail users.[source]

360 million
Global Windows Live Mail users.[source]

299 million
Active Windows Live Messenger Accounts worldwide. [Comscore MyMetrix, WW, March 2010--requires subscription]

1
Rank of Windows Live Messenger globally compared to all other instant messaging services. [Comscore MyMetrix, WW, March 2010 - requires subscription]

12

$5.7 Billion
Apple Net income for fiscal year ending Sep 2009. [source]

$6.5 Billion
Google Net income for fiscal year ending Dec 2009. [source]

$14.5 Billion
Microsoft Net Income for fiscal year ending June 2009. [source]

$23.0 billion
Total Microsoft revenue, FY2000. [source]

$58.4 billion
Total Microsoft revenue, FY2009. [source]

fxs

It has been a rough couple of weeks for us from a coverage standpoint. It seems like every time I turn on the computer, or talk to a reporter, or pick up a publication at home, or do a scan of my RSS feeds or Twitter client that I see more stories and opinions about the challenges we have, and how great some of our competitors are doing. iPad this, Droid that, sheesh. Even BusinessWeek got into the act, taking some unfair shots at Natal under the guise of looking at our consumer strategy all up. Man, when someone is beating on Natal prior to E3, you can bet we’ve got momentum against us.

Sitting there at the All Things Digital conference last week and hearing from our competitors really got me thinking, though. What is our differentiation? Why do we make certain decisions? What drives the way we think about business and technology? The morning after the Steve Jobs q&a (which everyone should watch), I dragged myself out of bed to go for a run. As I’d driven into the hotel, I noticed with a sinking feeling that there were lots of hills. I asked the desk clerk if they had a jogging map. They did not. I asked if he could point me a direction that did not have a bunch of hills. He laughed and pointed “up” the driveway and said that if I turned left there would be a nice running path. “I drove in that direction,” I said. “Seems like it’s uphill.” He shrugged, and away I went. Up.

And to keep my mind off the elevation gain, I was thinking about that previous question–what drives Microsoft? Coming up the second hill, I got it. Fundamentally, we believe that we have the opportunity to make life better for billions of people around the world through our products and services. Not millions, not tens of millions, but billions. We started with the idea of a computer on every desktop, and even though the computer looks a lot different today than it did those years, and even though the developed world probably does have a computer on every desk, there are still billions more to go, and we are going to get there. And when you start thinking about serving billions, which we do, we’re playing a game that nobody else in the industry is. I don’t know about you, but I come to work thinking about what I can do to help w/ that big goal. And it’s not all altruism and unicorns, when we do a great job of creating products that make life better for billions, it makes us better as a company, we sell more, we learn more, our partners do better, we do better. And when you have big dreams and big ambitions (like we do) and when you set the bar high (which we do) then sometimes we don’t get over the bar. There are people in the world that see that and call it failure; but failing to hit the mark doesn’t mean quitting. That’s part of our culture, too.

The run back to the hotel was easier. I even scrambled up a bluff next to the path (imagining the theme to “Rocky” in my head) and stood looking out over the Pacific for a bit. And I thought about our challenges, internal and external. External is easy. Internal is harder.

There is a saying I’ve heard a bunch since I’ve been at Microsoft: “Hope is not a strategy.” Heck, I’ve used it myself, and felt pretty superior while saying it, since I was talking about something I didn’t really own. But standing on the bluff, I wondered.

In my last mail, I referenced the need for us all to be comfortable in the gap between what is and what we desire to create. If we simply live in what we have, we become cynics. And if hope is not a strategy, then neither is cynicism, and we have lots of cynics among us. It is a challenge, especially for those of us who help tell our story. I often see it used, and use it myself, to cover up the pain of not meeting a goal, or seeing a product/service be ill-received by the market. If I am able to mock and sneer, then nobody outside the company can make me feel worse at setbacks and even failures.

As the evangelists for the company, we must guard against this. Hope can’t be a strategy, but it (and its cousin belief) is a needed ingredient in any success. Think about this for a bit. Each and every one of us needs to be grounded in our challenges and our wins. Right now, we are massively over-indexed in thinking and knowing about our losses and challenges. But what of our wins?

At the conference later that day, I had a chance to engage in a spirited and mostly friendly discussion with some folks who thought we were doing a crap job all up. Stock price flat, no iPad, etc. Instead of shrugging and agreeing, I talked about our wins and our momentum. We’ve built a huge server business over the last decade, something else nobody has done. Windows 7 sales are up about 39 percent year over year, against a huge base. Office 2010 beta largest ever, Office is in the cloud. Bing is one year old, 4 points of market share–nobody has grown search market share against Google but we are doing it. They are copying our look, our home page. New Hotmail is driving them to offer something other than threaded email for Gmail. Xbox Live has 23 million users–again, only two companies in the last decade have built subscription services like this (Netflix is the other). Windows Azure has 10,000 paying customers, we just announced 700k deployment of live@edu, probably the largest cloud deployment in the world. Natal is coming, it’s cool. Yes, we want to (and will) do better in phones. Yes, we want to (and will) have more cool thin slate/tablet/other form factor devices that run Windows. I’ll tell you, while I don’t think I created any true believers, I did force people to think differently about Microsoft and what we’re doing, and I call that a win.

This is our job. We don’t just represent the products and services we work on, we represent the company all up. Be ready to tell that story. Tell it to your co-workers here at Microsoft, to your family and friends, to members of the media. They know about our challenges, they don’t know about our wins and momentum. So tell them.

fxs

Time Capsule Alternatives, Windows 7 and Using Droid in Europe

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:38:03 +0000

We’ve got two Apple iMacs. I planned to buy the Apple Time Capsule to back them up until I read online reports that some seem to just die after 18 months. Can you recommend another backup solution for a home Apple environment?

A: The built-in backup program in your iMacs, called Time Machine, doesn’t require Apple’s Time Capsule product to work. It will work with almost any brand of directly connected external hard disk.

For instance, I back up my home iMac to a Western Digital drive that’s connected to it via a cable.

As for hard-drive life, it’s my experience that many seem to die sooner or later, especially if they are used heavily. I don’t know if the ones inside the Time Capsule are especially fragile. But, in just the past six months, I’ve had an external hard disk from G-Tech die on me; seen an internal hard disk on my home Dell die for a second time; and discovered that the hard disk on my colleague’s MacBook died.

One way to protect against the failure of a local backup drive is to consider, in addition to using an external disk, backing up your data to an online backup service like Mozy, Carbonite or SugarSync.

My Dell has Microsoft Vista but I can upgrade free to the new Windows 7. However, I was told my antivirus software won’t be compatible and my email will change—the program will no longer be “Windows Mail.” What do you recommend?

A: I regard Windows 7 as much better than Vista, but you are correct that many antivirus programs will require upgrading and Windows Mail will go away during the upgrade. You’ll have to install a new email program, such as the very similar “Windows Live Mail,” which can import your messages. So, the question really is one of trade-offs. If you’re satisfied with Vista, and would rather not perform these program replacements, you should stand pat. If you don’t like Vista, and are anxious to replace it, then the hassles you describe could be worth it.

Will Office 2003 work with the new Windows 7 operating system?

A: Microsoft, which makes both products, says the answer is yes, though I haven’t tested it.

Is it possible that the Verizon Motorola Droid, which doesn’t work in Europe, could be turned into a “world phone” that could work on European cellphone networks via an app somebody might develop?

A: An app wouldn’t be able to do that for the current Verizon Droid. It’s a hardware issue.

Verizon’s Droid, like most Verizon phones, is built to run on a type of network called CDMA that isn’t used in Europe or most other countries outside the U.S., which use a network standard called GSM.

To run on these networks, the Droid, or any other current CDMA phone, would need an entirely different radio, or two radios, one for each type of network.

Verizon offers a handful of so-called “world phones,” which have both kinds of radios inside, but the Droid isn’t one of them. Motorola may well make a new model with two radios, or even a model with one radio that would work overseas, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it did so.

What could be done with an app is to allow the Droid to make so-called VOIP phone calls via the Internet.

In fact, while I haven’t checked, there may already be such an app for Android—the Droid’s operating system—that would do so. But, in many cases, making such Internet phone calls requires the user to be in range of a Wi-Fi network. Some carriers don’t allow such calls to be made over their cellular networks.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Cleaning Out Windows XP

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:42:02 +0000

There’s no other major item most of us own that is as confusing, unpredictable and unreliable as our personal computers. Everybody has questions about them, and we aim to help.

Here are a few questions about computers I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

In last week’s Mailbox, you said that Windows XP machines can slow down over time unless you do “a lot of techie maintenance.” What did you mean? I regularly defragment the hard disk, tweak the registry, and clean out temporary files, but my PC is still slow.

All of these things are helpful, though I don’t recommend that nontechie users “tweak” the Windows registry, which contains vital program information that can mistakenly be removed or altered if you don’t know what you’re doing. Another speed-enhancing tactic is to use a program like Startup Cop Pro (snipurl.com/b4v91) to prevent unneeded programs from running at startup, and one like PC Decrapifier (pcdecrapifier.com) to clean out craplets — unwanted pre-installed programs.

However, what I had in mind when I wrote that was something more drastic, something a number of techies I know do annually: a complete replacement of Windows. This involves first backing up all your files, and then performing what’s called a “clean install” of Windows XP that wipes out everything on the PC and starts fresh. You then would copy back all your data files and re-install your programs.

This can make the computer feel like new, but the problem is that it can be tricky and tedious for nontechie users. Depending on the source of the copy of Windows XP you are using for the clean install, you may have to locate and re-install drivers for peripheral hardware and for hardware features of your particular make and model of PC. You may run into licensing and activation issues with your re-installed programs. And you may have to download numerous patches and upgrades for Windows itself and for your programs.

I am considering buying one of the new MacBook Pro 15″ laptops. What do you think of the keyboard on this laptop? Is it easy to type on compared to other laptop keyboards? What do you think of the shiny screen?

Because keyboard and screen preferences vary from person to person, I strongly urge all laptop shoppers to try out models they are considering before buying, even if only for a few minutes at a retail store. Having said that, I find the MacBook Pro keyboard to be very comfortable and easy to use, with good key spacing and feel. I personally prefer matte screens to glossy ones, but own laptops with both types and find the glossy ones acceptable, if not optimal.

I use the Windows Mail program that came with Vista on my computer. You say Windows 7 won’t come with that program. Is there something similar that can be installed?

Microsoft will encourage people to download a similar free program called Windows Live Mail, which is closely tied to its Live online service. Or, you could switch to a competing email program, or rely on Web-based email.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Helping Your Data Decamp to a Mac

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:52:02 +0000

With the holidays fast approaching, plenty of shoppers are heading toward their local Apple stores with plans to buy a new home computer. Amid all this excitement, it’s worth taking time to consider how to transfer content from the old Windows PC to a shiny new Mac.

Apple (AAPL) has promoted this PC-to-Mac switching concept heavily over recent years — particularly with its “I’m a Mac” commercials, which bluntly compare the Windows and Mac operating systems. Windows Vista has been a source of consternation all its own, and some people have opted for the Mac rather than risking problems with a Vista PC. Apple recently reported that about 50% of the people buying Macs in the Apple stores are new to the Mac.

[ See post to watch video ]

If you buy a new Mac from the Apple store, staffers there (“Geniuses,” as they call themselves) will transfer your files over to the new machine free. This process takes place in the store, though Apple says it generally isn’t a “while you wait” task. If you buy a Mac elsewhere, such as online or at Best Buy (BBY), Apple stores charge $50 for this transfer.

But some people aren’t comfortable with the idea of handing a computer filled with their personal files over to a stranger. If this is the case for you, some other viable options include copying your old PC’s data onto a portable hard drive or onto discs that are compatible with the new computer. If several home computers are networked, files can be transferred onto a drive accessible by all the machines.

This week, I tried yet another method, copying data from a Windows machine over to a new MacBook using a special transfer cable from Belkin International Inc. The aptly named Switch-to-Mac Cable plugs into USB ports on two computers. It came out a month ago and is available for $50 at places like Best Buy and Apple stores. Like other transferring methods, it moves only files and not programs or applications, such as Microsoft Word (MSFT). (Windows applications can run on a Mac using programs like Boot Camp, Fusion or Parallels.)

The Switch-to-Mac Cable makes it easier to transfer data from a Windows PC to a Mac.

I tested the Belkin Switch-to-Mac Cable by transferring data to a new Apple MacBook from my two-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad X60, which runs Vista. (Most people will transfer from an older PC that doesn’t run Vista.)

After installing the software included and connecting the transfer cable to both the Mac and Windows PC, short, on-screen prompts walked me through the steps for copying data from one computer to the other. On one instructional screen, I checked boxes to indicate what I wanted to transfer, including documents, pictures, music, videos, Internet Explorer bookmarks, desktop wallpaper and desktop files. Here, I could also opt to transfer a custom folder as well as personal information from Outlook like email, contacts and calendar.

I liked Belkin’s simple approach, including unintimidating software and a straightforward cable with a glowing, white indicator. But the files didn’t all properly transfer from my Windows laptop to my Mac. Most notably, the software prompted me to move files on my desktop, but the cable moved only five of the 23 selected files stored there.

Also, I use Mozilla’s Firefox as my default browser, but Belkin doesn’t move Firefox bookmarks to the Mac. Still, my Internet Explorer bookmarks moved over into Safari, Apple’s browser. Belkin explained that it left out Firefox transfers, instead focusing on programs like Safari that come installed on Macs. Even without a cable, Firefox itself will export bookmarks to be moved to the Mac in just a few simple steps.

I had no problems transferring everything else, and things like photos and music moved to the Mac appeared there in logical places. For example, photos stored in the “My Pictures” folder on my Windows PC automatically moved over to iPhoto on the Mac and retained their original folder labels in iPhoto.

In most cases, newly transferred files were clearly labeled on the Mac in folders marked “Windows PC.” After my initial transfer, I used the cable for additional transfers, and the data moved in those follow-ups were labeled “Windows PC-2″ and so on. When my email, contacts and calendar transferred from my Windows Live Mail desktop client, I wasn’t sure where this data had moved within Apple Mail because I didn’t see a “Windows PC” folder. A Belkin representative explained that files transferred to Apple Mail are stored in an “Import” folder.

If your transfer doesn’t work perfectly the first time, try moving stray files into a folder that transferred successfully in a previous attempt. I did this with some of my desktop files when they didn’t move over and it worked, albeit with an extra step.

Over the phone, I walked through numerous troubleshooting scenarios with Belkin to figure out why my desktop files didn’t transfer over to the new Mac, but nothing helped. Belkin said it hadn’t seen my desktop transfer problem in its tests.

I was frustrated to find that Belkin doesn’t offer much in the way of detailed instructions for users, such as a FAQs Web site or troubleshooting steps for common hiccups. Its simplicity is an asset, but when performing an important task like transferring data, I’d rather have the option of knowing more than less. Belkin says it plans to add more help for users in the future.

As its name indicates, the Belkin Switch-to-Mac Cable isn’t designed to transfer data from one Mac to another, nor from one Windows PC to another. Nor will it transfer data from a Mac to a Windows PC. Additionally, all hidden directories and system directories are ignored, as are all files with the following extensions: .exe, .com, .dll, .scr, .ini, .db, .lnk.

Not tested was a competing product from Detto Technologies, the $50 Move2Mac, which comes in two versions: One enables transfers from older PCs without USB ports, the other enables transfers from PCs with USB ports that are running Windows 98, Millennium, 2000 or XP — but not Vista, which the Belkin enables.

If you’re moving away from a Windows PC, Belkin’s Switch-to-Mac Cable is one tool that can make this transition easier.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

MicroHoo: Hasta La Vista, Hotmail?

Kara Swisher — Sat, 03 May 2008 07:48:41 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown wrote a piece about Yahoo’s worries about the scrutiny that the monopolistic combination of Yahoo Mail and Microsoft’s Hotmail would get if it merged with the software giant.

The issue–which has not gotten a lot of attention–is actually a major sticking point in the price negotiations going on this weekend between the companies, as Yahoo (YHOO) seeks solid downside protection, if the deal becomes mired in approval issues by governmental authorities due to email and instant messaging dominance on the Web.

But Microsoft (MSFT) does not want to pay more, of course. And so the legions of minions under increasingly-under-pressure–translation: more yelling than ever this week–CEO Steve Ballmer are hard at work this weekend on all-nighters to solve the problem, said several sources.

One solution is to spin off all the communications assets, said sources, into a separate company. In that case, the two brands would remain, so as not to inconvenience consumers, although all the back-end technologies to run the services would be merged.

The more drastic step is for Microsoft sell Hotmail to a third party, especially given that Yahoo Mail is considered a stronger brand. Hotmail has already been in the midst of a transition, including a recent name change to Windows Live Hotmail.

Microsoft’s mail offerings now include Hotmail and also Windows Live Mail. The latter offering would presumably remain at the merged company with its @live.com address.

But Hotmail is the candidate to be sold off (with the requisite marketing to try to port its users over to @live.com first).

And potential buyers? Well, not Google (GOOG), but there are many, including AOL (TWX), Comcast (CMCSA) and AT&T (T), as well as IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI). As to price, that’s unclear, but it could be in the billions of dollars.

That’s another plus for Microsoft, which will obviously have to fork over more money if it wants to acquire Yahoo.

And, it is also priceless if Microsoft can minimize government interference in the deal, most especially any antitrust investigations related to its powerful email assets.

That must be a worry, since Microsoft and Yahoo completely dominate all email on the Internet. According to the most recent comScore (SCOR) figures, for example, Yahoo has 256 million users, while Microsoft has 255 million.

Google’s Gmail is a distant third with about 92 million users and AOL has about half that at 49 million.

The same domination is true in the instant messaging market, with Microsoft and Yahoo holding an 80% to 90% market share together.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

No, Windows Live Mail is on first, Windows Live Hotmail is on second …

John Paczkowski — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:24:08 +0000

We're Calling the Next Version 'Windows Live Mail Hotmail Mail for Windows'

John Paczkowski — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:47:47 +0000

Thank God, discussions between Microsoft and Yahoo have cooled off, because an integration of the two companies’ online services would have been a branding nightmare. Just look at Hotmail. Microsoft finally brought its reworking of the popular hosted email offering out of beta and into full release today.
But instead of retaining the service’s original name, or versioning it, Microsoft rebranded it as one of its “Live” services. And so we have Windows Live Hotmail. Which wouldn’t be so bad if Microsoft hadn’t previously renamed Hotmail “Windows Live Mail” and “MSN Hotmail” before that. Back in February, Microsoft–in an attempt to mitigate confusion over the service’s name change–said that Windows Live Mail was being renamed Windows Live Hotmail. “As we prepare to launch the final version of our new Web mail service, we recognize the importance of ensuring that our 260+ million existing customers come over to the new service smoothly and without confusion,” Richard Sim, Windows Live Hotmail senior product manager, wrote at the time. “By adopting the name ‘Windows Live Hotmail,’ we believe we’re bringing together the best of both worlds–new and old. We’re able to offer the great new technology that Windows Live has to offer while also bringing the emotional connection many existing and loyal users have with Hotmail.”

And hey–don’t forget brand confusion. Because Microsoft’s Windows Live set of products also includes a desktop email client–Windows Live Mail Desktop–and it’s got a new name, too: Windows Live Mail. Apparently Microsoft Live has exceptionally high brand recall … in its own Marketing and Development division.

We're Calling the Next Version 'Windows Live Mail Hotmail Mail for Windows'

John Paczkowski — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:47:47 +0000