The best way to determine the flavor of the month at Microsoft is to look at the names of its products.
When Microsoft’s chat program was first released, it was called “MSN Messenger,” reflecting Microsoft’s increased strategic focus on the MSN brand. I remember the day it magically morphed into “Windows Messenger” and suddenly became another integral part of Windows. Now we’ve got Windows Live Messenger, even though the latest version is not endemic to the Windows Live vision.
This kind of marketing strategy worked well when Windows was the most prominent brand on a user’s computer. Applications that carried the “Windows” moniker—Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, etc.—felt comfortable and close, and those that didn’t seemed foreign. The only problem is that now Windows itself has become an island off the coast of the Web.
As a user, how many times a day do I see “Windows” versus “Google”? My generation doesn’t know or care about “Windows,” and why should they? For all the talk about Google trying to “get onto the desktop,” you rarely hear about the incredible brand strengthening that takes place every time a user types “www.google.com”. Users go to Google and know it; Windows is a foam peanut that comes in the computer box. More than Google trying to get onto the desktop, Microsoft is trying to get onto the Web.
And as a developer, I cringe now whenever I’m faced with a Windows-only toolkit. It’s not a Microsoft bias; Windows-only APIs just “feel” sequestered and disconnected from the rest of the industry. Even when I need to do client development, I’d much rather embed a browser and program in standard Web languages. The threat of Microsoft-proprietary extensions to IE7 and other platforms no longer seems grave. The game has outgrown Microsoft and reduced it to a mere player.
