10 Unnecessary Microsoft Product Name Changes -- Redmondmag.com

10 Unnecessary Microsoft Product Name Changes

Why, oh why?

By Doug Barney
12/01/2010

If there's one thing Microsoft loves to do, it's come up with new names. Even "Microsoft" was originally called "Micro-soft." Here we present 10 products whose names really didn't need to be changed.

The Windows client went through Windows 1, 2, 3; then years, with Windows 95 and 98 (with a brief experiment with Windows ME); then Microsoft added words or letters after Windows (like XP and Vista); finally, the company has gone back to using numbers with Windows 7
Windows Mobile 6 is now Windows Phone 7
Windows NT is now Windows Server
Office Communications Server is now Lync Server 2010
Hotmail is now Windows Live Hotmail
Search went from MSN Search to Windows Live Search to Bing
Business Productivity Online Suite is now Office 365
Microsoft Office Groove is now SharePoint Workspace
On the Enterprise Resource Planning front, Solomon, Axapta, Great Plains and Navision were all changed to include "Dynamics," becoming Dynamics SL, Dynamics AX, Dynamics GP and Dynamics NV, respectively
SoftGrid became App-V

About the Author

Doug Barney is editor in chief of Redmond magazine and the VP, editorial director of Redmond Media Group.

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