Microsoft has done a lot of revamping and renaming to their web services over the recent years. The strategy of renaming was an awful attempt at trying to break ground on the web. It only resulted in confusing a lot of users. Recently, a handful of those services have seen the end draw near including Windows Live for TV, Windows Live Expo, Live Search Books, and Live Search Academic. What a list!
Launch: January 2007
Death: June 24, 2008
Windows Live for TV was intended to be a plugin for Windows Live Spaces/Messenger that would bring enhanced functionality such as chat and voice conversations, PC-to-PC calls, and remote access to Windows Live Spaces all from your TV. Unfortunately, the service never made it out of beta stage. A program manager was quoted stating the following:
"The project was moved to a different organization internally in the spring of last year and will most likely not come out of beta."
Launch: February 2006
Death: July 31, 2008
Windows Live Expo was the equivalent of Craigslist for Microsoft. I'm guessing not enough money was exchanging hands because now it too will join the "retired" list of Microsoft Live services. With this particular arena already dominated by Craigslist and Ebay one can see why. If you head to the site you'll see the following pop-up appear:
Live Search Books
Launch: December 2006
Death: June 2008
Live Search Academic
Launch: April 2006
Death: June 2008
Live Search Books and Academic were intended to be a web search engines for books and scholarly literature. The services were in direct competition with Google Book Search and Google Scholarly. Search results for Live Search Academic came directly from trusted sources rather than crawling the internet relentlessly for results. In the end, there were over 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles scanned and indexed. Unfortunately, we can't compare it to Google because Google has not released their data. However, Google has noted that they scan more than 3,000 books per day into their database.
Has Microsoft taken on too much or are users just tired of there same old tricks? When Microsoft branded their old services with the "Live" image, they also released a ton of new services. As you can see, a considerable amount are already dying off. On the same note, most of these "new" services by Microsoft were very late comers in fields that were, and still are, dominated by others that have a strong hold on their respective markets. These are also markets that users have already associated with one company and Microsoft wasn't bringing anything revolutionary nor groundbreaking to the table in order to break grounds. This seems to be a repeating pattern with Microsoft when it comes to their web products. It's a small wonder why their services are dying off. Which one will be next?
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In a comparison between Microsoft and Google, I'd have to say the more tech savvy tend to opt for Gmail, but the more non tech savvy go for Hotmail (this isn't implying that the same is for everyone). Though I do not use their online services anymore, I do believe that Microsoft has quite the potential to break ground. Just look at the sheer number of hotmail and messenger users. Only problem is, many of their users are oblivious to the other services offered, as to where Google service users do take part in several services. Microsoft would have a higher value if they could focus and not confuse their users.
Posted by: Dee | June 22, 2008 7:06 PM
I agree with Dee. Microsoft needs to stop confusing people.
I use hotmail and messenger and that is it.
Microsoft seems to think that it is my job to find everything and then figure it out. They need to make things easier for the average person.
I'm not even sure what "Live" is.
The Masked Millionaire
Posted by: The Masked Millionaire | June 23, 2008 8:02 AM
I agree. Microsoft is still pumping out new Live services while some of their older live services seriously lack support and functionality.
For example their Live Alerts. I use this on one of my sites to inform users about updates trough Messenger. However, it seems impossible to change anything to your alert feed after you set it up. Since you don't signup for an account you don't have a control panel of any kind to change even the simple things like the name and images of the feed. In the past you used to be able to request changes via email, but since a few months they don't seem to answer mails anymore on the two emailaddresses I'm aware of.
Posted by: JohanBru | June 24, 2008 11:07 AM