LiveSide - News blog

What's the name of that Map thing?

Virtual Earth? Local.live.com? Maps.live.com? It's all so confusing. We've suggested just changing the name to Maps and be done with it, and recently there have been signs that the change has occured.

First, http://maps.live.com works, and doesn't resolve to http://local.live.com as it used to.

Then on the Live Search menu, Local has been replaced by Maps:

and in recent posts by Soma Somasegar, MSN Search's blog, and others, they're using the maps.live.com address.

Finally, in a post the night before Virtual Earth 3d went live, CIO India reported that the change had been made:

"Microsoft plans to announce the new feature, called Virtual Earth 3D, on Monday afternoon at a press conference in San Francisco, where the company will also change the service's name from Live Local to Live Search Maps, as well as the Web address..."

There's been no official word that we can find on the change, but it seems to be a done deal.

Published Nov 23 2006, 08:41 PM by Kip Kniskern

Filed under: Live Local, Maps

Comments

	BV2312 said: I'm confused by just reading about it... it's either Local or Maps but if you look at the advert they took out in UK's Metro (reported yday) it's map underneth the live search bar... Oh well it's goin to be Windows Live Maps/Local Vs Google Maps/Local and Virtual Earth Vs Google Earth or something like that :S November 23, 2006 9:08 PM
	bf1977 said: Very good Penalty that not yet has the cities of Brazil in 3D November 23, 2006 10:01 PM
	Khristopher said: i hope they just call it windows live maps not windows live maps search!! that's a bad bad name. the word search just does not need to be included in it! November 23, 2006 11:47 PM
	Chris said: how about Windows Live Search Maps? ;) November 24, 2006 12:15 AM
	tophtucker said: I was about to say "good decision" about the name change until I read "Live Search Maps." Windows Live service names are wordy enough as it is (compare to "Windows Live Mail" to "Gmail", for instance). Throwing "Search" in there is just totally unneccessary. But speaking of name changes, some services appear to have dropped the "Windows" - see Live Search, for instance: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=liveside&mkt=en-us&FORM=LVSP Or Live QnA: http://qna.live.com/ Interesting. It's nice in that it's less wordy, but including the "Windows" seems important in light of Xbox Live and Office Live. November 24, 2006 5:02 AM
	Chris said: Correct, the "Windows" part of several services have been silently dropped. I agree that with Office Live and Xbox Live it is needed, especially when other services are becoming just "live" too: http://www.gamesforwindows.com/live/aboutLive.aspx November 25, 2006 4:08 PM
	tophtucker said: Yeah, while it's exciting to start hearing some more about Live Anywhere (there's another example of the prefix being dropped), I was kind of confused by that site. Actually, it's been nagging me ever since they announced Live Anywhere: will it still be Xbox Live, or will it be something-else-Live? ("Games for Windows Live"? That's a mouthful.) That GFW just calls it "LIVE", but that's inviting all sorts of confusion with "Live Search," "Live QnA," etc. Xbox Live for online gaming stuff, Office Live for online business stuff, Windows Live for online consumer stuff. It used to be a nice neat little Live triangle. If Microsoft wants to expand "Xbox" from being just a console to being a whole gaming initiative, they could just call it "Xbox Live" on the PC (and cell phones), too. Would that be so hard for people to swallow? It's a tough choice. And then there's the Zune....... Every Zune user gets a ZuneTag, right? Does that make the Zune network "Zune Live"? Maybe everything needs to be redivided into those 3 nice neat categories. Zune and Xbox Live can go together under the "Entertainment" category. But what to call the combined category? Mircosoft Entertainment Services Live 2007(r)(tm)? Maybe it's fine the way it is.... But all of this is very important in terms of the whole "Who is Window Live?" issue. November 26, 2006 3:51 AM