Ask HN: 微软频繁且令人烦恼的品牌重塑能从中获益吗？
1 分•作者: lr0•9 个月前
我从未见过任何一家公司或企业像微软这样频繁地进行品牌重塑。起初，我以为那里的产品经理可能遇到了身份危机，他/她迟早会离职，然后这一切就会结束。但这种做法似乎从未停止过，这让我不禁怀疑这是否是公司政策，并且实际上对业务增长有所帮助。你们谁知道这种密集的品牌重塑有什么可能的商业用途吗？
你们中的一些人可能没有接触过很多微软产品，因此可能没有经历过我所说的例子，所以举几个例子：
```
* Azure Active Directory → Microsoft Entra ID（可能是其中最糟糕的）
* Microsoft Threat Protection → Microsoft 365 Defender
* Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection → Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
* Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection → Microsoft Defender for Office 365
* Azure Advanced Threat Protection → Microsoft Defender for Identity
```
最近的 Office 产品：
```
* Office 365 Basic for Business 更名为 Microsoft 365 Apps for business
* Office 365 Standard for Business 更名为 Microsoft 365 Business Basics
* Office 365 Premium for Business 更名为 Microsoft 365 Business Standard
* 另一个层级随后更名为 Microsoft 365 Business Premium
```
其他疯狂的品牌重塑：
* Microsoft Remote Desktop -> Windows App (？？！)
* Outlook for windows -> Outlook Classic
在 Microsoft 365 品牌重塑之后，整个 Office 系列现在又被重新命名为 Microsoft Copilot 365
其他一些产品甚至毫无意义，比如 Windows OneDrive，它与你从 Office/Microsoft 365 获得的 OneDrive 不同。还有一些产品的命名极其混乱；XBox、Xbox360、Xbox One、Xbox One S/X、Xbox Series X/S。我忍不住认为有人故意选择让它们变得如此混乱，他们的审查周期不可能没有注意到任何问题。
另一个黑客社区可能熟悉的例子是 .NET（最初就是一个糟糕的名字，但暂且不提）。.NET Framework 开源版本的新名称是“.NET Core”，当时在工作中，我们过去将使用 .NET（闭源版本）的旧项目称为“.NET 项目”，将新项目称为“.NET Core”项目，然后微软决定放弃“Core”（同样，最初就是一个糟糕的名字），并在内部将使用旧框架的项目称为 .NET Framework 项目，所以现在我们有两个框架，一个叫做“.NET”框架，另一个叫做“.NET Framework”框架。
谢天谢地，我在工作中不再需要处理很多微软产品了，但当我不得不这样做时，我只是对那些与我离开时完全相同的东西却有着完全不同的名字感到震惊，我最近发现一个团队建立了一套“通用语言”，他们同意在内部使用，以指代他们正在使用的微软产品，以避免混淆。
再说一次，我的问题是，微软持续这种疯狂的品牌重塑政策是否有任何合理的理由？让人们一直感到困惑真的有助于他们的营销策略和增长吗？
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I know no company or business in history that had the amount of rebranding that Microsoft did, initially I thought that the product manager there might have had an identity crisis, and he/she will be leave the position at some point and this it will be over. But this practice does not seem to end ever, which made me wonder if it is a company policy and it actually helps the business growth. Does any one of you know any possible business use to such intensive rebranding?<p>Some of you might have not dealt with many Microsoft products so you might have not experienced examples of what I am talking about, so to name a few:<p><pre><code> * Azure Active Directory → Microsoft Entra ID (maybe the most horrible one of them)
* Microsoft Threat Protection → Microsoft 365 Defender
* Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection → Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
* Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection → Microsoft Defender for Office 365
* Azure Advanced Threat Protection → Microsoft Defender for Identity
</code></pre>
Office products recently:<p><pre><code> * Office 365 Basic for Business is renamed to Microsoft 365 Apps for business
* Office 365 Standard for Business is renamed to Microsoft 365 Business Basics
* Office 365 Premium for Business is renamed to Microsoft 365 Business Standard
* Some other tier was then renamed to be Microsoft 365 Business Premium
</code></pre>
Other insane rebranding:
* Microsoft Remote Desktop -> Windows App (???!)
* Outlook for windows -> Outlook Classic<p>And the entire Office things after the Microsoft 365 rebranding, is now being rebranded again as Microsoft Copilot 365<p>Some other products do not even make any sense, like Windows OneDrive that not the same as the OneDrive you get with Office/Microsoft 365. Some other products have extremely confusing naming; XBox, Xbox360, Xbox One, Xbox One S/X, Xbox Series X/S. I can’t stop thinking that someone intentionally choose them to be that confusing, no way their review cycle could not have noticed any of that.<p>Another example that might be familiar for the hacker community is .NET (which is a bad name initially but disregarding that) The new name for the open source version of the .NET Framework was called “.NET Core”, back then at work we used to refer to old projects that used .NET (the closed source one) as “.NET Projects” and the new ones as “.NET Core” projects, then Microsoft decided to drop the “Core” (which was, again, a bad name initially), and referred internally to projects that used the old framework as .NET Framework projects, so now we have two frameworks, one called the “.NET” framework and other called the “.NET Framework” framework.<p>Thankfully I no longer have to deal with a lot of Microsoft products at work, but when I have to, I’m just astonished by how much things that are just literally the same of how I left them are having totally different names, I found out lately that a team had set up a “ubiquitous language” set that they agreed to use internally to refer to the MS products they are using to avoid confusing.<p>Again, my question, is there any sane reason why Microsoft keeps this insane rebranding policy? Is making people confused all the time actually help their marketing strategy and growth?