In a post on the Building Windows 8 blog, Chris Jones, vice-president of Windows Live Group at Microsoft, explained that consumer feedback indicated that users were confused, as the services and apps created under the Windows Live brand felt "bolted on" to the Windows operating system.
"Windows Live services and apps were built on versions of Windows that were simply not designed to be connected to a cloud service for anything other than updates, and as a result, they felt 'bolted on' to the experience," Jones wrote. "This created some amount of customer confusion, which is noted in several reviews and editorials. The names we used to describe our products added to that complexity: we used “Windows Live" to refer to software for your PC (Windows Live Essentials), a suite of web-based services (Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Messenger), your account relationship with Microsoft (Windows Live ID), and a host of other offers."
The launch of the next Windows operating system, Windows 8, will see the brand dropped in favour of a "seamless Windows experience".
"There is no 'separate brand' to think about or a separate service to install—it is all included when you turn on your PC for the first time," Jones said.
Instead, a Microsoft account will be extended as a universal sign-in for all the services that used to fall under Windows Live. Microsoft account IDs can now also be linked to third party services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so contacts from these networks are integrated into a cloud-based contact list and can be emailed via Hotmail or messaged on MSN Messenger—which will be renamed simply as 'messaging app'.
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