Windows Live’s demise creates Windows 8 problems

As I anticipated two months ago, Microsoft officially sent Windows Live to the bit bucket yesterday. We’re supposed to believe that the ‘Softies are unifying their cloud services and lining them up under the “Microsoft Account” banner, but that’s a whole lot easier said than done. Or explained. In particular, users are going to lose a lot in the transition from Windows Live to cloud-friendly Windows RT Metro apps, and there are lots of legacy loose ends.

To see where we’re headed, let’s take a look at where we’ve been.

The term “Windows Live” has never been anything but a marketing gimmick — at times an embarrassing one at that. Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie announced the package in 2005 as a euphemism — er, upgrade — for “MSN” online apps. It contained the log-in credential handler (formerly known as Hotmail ID, Microsoft Wallet, MS Passport, .Net Passport, MS Passport Network, then Windows Live ID), Hotmail (which has been rebranded so many times, I think I need to take off my shoes to count ’em all), Messenger, Windows Live Search (say, “Bing”), Safety Center (online malware scanner), OneCare (subscription-based malware package), and Favorites (sharing Internet Explorer Favorites across machines).

Windows Live grew by leaps and bounds, and over its lifetime came to encompass about 100 different client programs and websites/services, ranging from groundbreaking (Windows Live Mesh) to glorified bug fixes (Windows Live Outlook Connector).

Steve Sinofsky moved to the Windows Division in 2006, then took over as head of the division (now the Windows and Windows Live Division) in July 2009. He was the key driving force behind Windows Live Essentials 2009 Wave 3. When Sinofsky’s most visible product, Windows 7, shipped in July 2009, it didn’t have native applications for mail, calendar, messenger, or photos. Instead, Windows 7 users were prompted to download and install Windows Live Essentials.

Some observers (present company included) noted at the time how removing those features from Windows 7 and putting them in downloadable form made it much easier to get Windows 7 stable and out the door. Microsoft essentially gave itself an extra three to four months of breathing room to get the Windows Live Essential apps working, without holding up or bogging down the release of Windows 7. Being able to update the WLE programs asynchronously with Windows itself would let Microsoft keep up in the feature race with popular competitors.

Right now, Windows Live contains 12 online destinations/services — Admin Center (email hosting), Calendar, Contacts, Devices (connecting with mobile devices), Groups, Home (metasite), Hotmail, ID, Plug-ins (for Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, and Writer), Profile, Service Status, SkyDrive — and eight client-side “Windows Live Essential” apps — Family Safety, Mail, Mesh, Messenger, Messenger Companion, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, and Writer. Officially, WLE also includes the Bing Bar, Outlook Hotmail Connector, and Silverlight. There are also apps for Windows Phones.

We’re seeing the same strategy being played out this time, but in a different way. The Windows 8 Consumer Preview includes a handful of Metro-style apps — Calendar, Mail, Messaging, People, Photos, SkyDrive — whose names suggest they map directly onto Windows Live Essentials apps. The Metro apps we’ve seen so far with those names have very few features — they don’t even come close to their Windows Live Essentials counterparts. Then again, Microsoft has branded each of them as an “App Preview.”

Will we see some name-worthy apps in the Release Preview in a few weeks? Hard to say. But just as Sinofsky’s separation of Windows 7 and Windows Live Essentials bought time to polish up the apps, so too with Windows 8 and the Metro apps. Microsoft doesn’t really have to get them right until RTM, probably in late August. Or even General Availability, which looks like October. In fact, taking a page from the Windows 7 playbook, what would keep Microsoft from shipping Metro App stubs, which download the final version from the Microsoft Store? (Although Sinofsky does insist, “it is all included when you turn on your PC for the first time.”)

It’s also entirely possible that Microsoft will only offer minimal Metro Apps, in anticipation of selling their own, or having commission-paying partners put them in the Store.

Aside from the uncertainty, I see three problems:

1. The Metro apps don’t offer the same features as the Windows Live offerings. I’ve already talked about SkyDrive’s inferiority to Windows Live Mesh in several key respects. The feature set of the other Metro Apps are still largely undefined, but it remains to be seen if Metro Photos can match Windows Live Photo Gallery, for example (much less iPhoto), or Metro Video can absorb the feature set in Windows Live Movie Maker. Color me skeptical. We haven’t heard anything about Windows Live Writer. As things stand now, even a relatively straightforward application like Metro Mail doesn’t come close to Windows Live Mail.
2. What happens to all of the people who rely on Windows Live? Microsoft faced a similar dilemma when it released Windows Live Essentials 2011 (Wave 4), which wouldn’t work on Windows XP systems. The solution was to repackage Windows Live Essentials 2009 and call it “Windows Live Essentials for Windows XP.” Are Windows 7 users relegated to using legacy Windows Live apps?
3. The widespread adoption of the new “Microsoft Account” ID has privacy ramifications. In the past, Windows Live (and MSN and Hotmail before it) relied on a Windows Live ID — basically, an email address that’s @hotmail.com or @live.com, controlled and tracked by Microsoft. Now Microsoft’s moving beyond that point. With Microsoft Account, you can provide any valid email address and Microsoft will start tracking it — er, Microsoft will allow you to sign in to its services with it. When you use an existing email address for your Microsoft Account, Microsoft sends that email a confirmation message. If you respond to the confirmation message, your email address turns into your Microsoft Account ID. Windows 8 lets you use your Microsoft Account when you sign in to Windows to link your settings across multiple machines and simplify log-ons in many apps.

Certainly, other companies use similar methods for cross-linking email addresses — Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook all have ways to goad you into supplying your personal email addresses for their databases. But other companies don’t track every time you log on to Windows.

Microsoft promises to let us know more in the coming weeks. Presumably, we’ll be able to see for ourselves how the Metro apps compare to and match up with the Windows Live apps in the Release Preview. But unless the Metro apps turn out to be a whole lot more powerful than what’s on offer right now — and at least comparable to analogous apps on the iPad and Android platforms — Windows 8’s going to turn into an even harder sell. Why pay for an upgrade when you have to fall back on orphaned Windows Live programs running on a legacy desktop?

This story, “Windows Live’s demise creates Windows 8 problems,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.