It’s been three years almost since Windows Live was launched back in November of 2005, and the road from there to here has been anything but smooth. Almost from the beginning, no one could seem to answer the simple question “what is Windows Live?”. Rather than usher in a new era of live services, Windows Live instead cast doubt on the future of MSN and seemed to be going off in all directions at once. At the same time, a little incubation project called Start.com became Live.com, MSN Search became an in-house project, which became Windows Live Search, which became Live Search. MSN Hotmail became Windows Live Mail, and then Windows Live Mail – desktop appeared, and Windows Live Mail became Windows Live Hotmail. No one could seemingly figure out what to call maps. Was it Live Maps? Live Search Maps? Live Local? At times, in various places on the live.com domain, it was all three.

And yet for the past year and a half, with a new management in place, and new organizational connections with Windows, the utter mess that had plagued Windows Live was slowly but surely being cleaned up. Some services were shut down (Expo, Favorites), others were relegated back to MSN (Live Search), and still others were just kind of forgotten (remember the rogue little service called Windows Live Barcode?). Now, with the advent of Wave 3, for the first time, Windows Live should have a coherent structure and a coherent face.

And done right, Windows Live is and can be a compelling set of services. No one else offers anything so complete, with common storage, common contacts, a common interface, and a common user experience on the desktop or online, all accessed by a single sign-on. And no one else will offer such a complete range of products, for both the web and desktop: Mail, Messenger, Calendar, Events and Groups, Photos and Movie Maker, Spaces, and storage through SkyDrive, all managed by a single sign on and a single contact list, with granular permission controls.