Windows Live Folders not final name for cloud storage service – Windows Live Skydrive instead?

By Chris on August 3, 2007 6:38 AM

9 comments

Some things just seem to keep reappearing like a bad penny, and for Windows Live its undoubtedly the naming strategy. Since the Folders beta was expanded earlier this week, the login page has referenced the service as Windows Live Skydrive. As we’ve talked about previously, Skydrive was the codename for the cloud storage service while it was in initial development. We managed to get the following official comment:

“Windows Live Folders has always been a placeholder name only and will not be the final name of the service when it ultimately launches. We are not able to publicly confirm any name beyond Windows Live Folders at this time; however, Windows Live Folders is in beta, and in addition to gathering input and making changes to the service, Microsoft will update the name as well.”

So will Skydrive be the final name or not? It definitely ranks along the new “cool” names of Popfly and Silverlight, however it seem an unusual step to use a codename for a final product name. Even more so when you consider the current Senior Vice President for Windows and Windows Live allegedly dislikes codenames, but lets not start Long Zheng bashing him again.

To wrap it all off, yes the domain http://skydrive.live.com/ has now started working.

Posted in News | Tags: Corporate Strategy, Folders, SkyDrive, Storage, Windows Live

Comments

DN2004

Will be interesting to see what comes of this. I wonder will it be called Windows Live Skydrive, or just Skydrive.
Mirek2

I don’t really like the name. It doesn’t really capture the service as much as ‘Folders’. It also kinda sounds like a bad rhyme on Windows Live…
Alber1690

I found a little detail several days ago that had to this, but I wasn’t sure if it was meaningful. So, do you guys remember how before the help.live.com would lead to the OneCare help site. Well, they finally seemed to have fixed it and changed it to a help site home for all MSN and Live services/products, which makes more sense. If you look under “Windows Live products and services,” you’ll find “Windows Live SkyDrive Beta.” But then if you click on it, the name of the section is called “Windows Live Folders Beta Help.” So, I just find it kind of awkward to have them call it SkyDrive even when it seems they had just updated the site.
hey07

The name should be skydrive cos at the press conference in Japan, Japanese live and msn team showed this skeydrive name. First I thought just for Japan.
Chris

hey07: which press conference was that?

Alber1690: these kind of small errors are why we went for an official statement.
Jesper

I am starting to dislike living in Denmark. I can never register for the cool betas :-(
hey07

Chris: According to this article
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/pcuser/articles/0708/03/news008.html
about new msn and window live strategy, it’s in Japanese.
But you can tell by this picture
http://image.itmedia.co.jp/pcuser/articles/0708/03/l_tm0708msn13.jpg
I think this will help.
Alber1690

So according to the Windows Vista blog, OneCare is giving 10GB of photo online storage…and if that’s a paid-service, then Folders/Skydrive should be around 1-2GB?
Mephiles

They probably forgot to change the login page and domain to folders. That’s all ;) They do that a lot on most of their betas. They can be very forgetful lol.

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