Microsoft made its Windows Live QnA service (a la Answers.com) available today. So what better question to ask than: What is Windows Live? There are four days left to come up with the answer.Our own Oliver Rist dissected the Live juggernaut recently in his Enterprise Windows column, What the heck is Windows Live, anyway?.…If you’re thinking it’s just meek retaliation to the Web service juggernaut that Google is becoming, you’re only partially right. Sure, Google’s announcements — and even more recently, news from Yahoo and others — are spurring Windows Live announcements to keep Microsoft’s cutting-edge Internet relevance alive. But the product responses themselves are neither brand-new nor meek. Redmond’s been planning this for some time… [Rist’s Live in a nutshell:] Live Search is an updated version of MSN Search; Live Toolbar, yet another Web browser toolbar; Live.com is Microsoft’s customizable portal page; Shopping and Product Search, its answers to Amazon and Froogle, respectively; Live Local, the reply to Google Maps and Mapquest; QnA, the answer to Yahoo Groups; Live Mail Desktop, the counter-punch to Google Mail, although with some very sexy mail client features culled from Outlook Web Access; and Live Expo is a burgeoning Microsoft iteration of eBay or Craigslist. Live Academic is a search engine devoted solely to academic content — research journals and such — for which I don’t know a direct competitor off the top of my head. Windows Live Search Mobile is supposed to deliver all the power of the updated Live Search engine in a format suitable for Windows Mobile 5 pocket devices. OK, so it is Microsoft playing catch-up on Webifying everything. Too bad Google gets all the glory in this PR-centric world. The ex-MS PR hack Robert Scoble makes some points in A Google Vs. Microsoft Double Standard?, noting Google’s edge with Web-centric bloggers following its media home run with news of its short-on-beef Office rival package yesterday. This one sort of says it for those who use Hotmail and will be switched over the white-page world of Live at some stage soon…6) Branding. Microsoft doesn’t have a cool Web brand right now. In fact, the one that they had, MSN, is being thrown in the trash and they are switching over to Windows Live. That probably will turn out to be the right decision in the long term, but in the short term Google has the better naming team – by far. Calling Google Maps “Google Maps?” Sheer brilliance! Who came up with the name “Windows Live Local?” Blllleeeeccchhh. And there have been some questions about if Live is the real deal, or if it is pure marketing by MS. Earlier this month, a early-departing Live manager, Niall Kennedy, raised concerns about Microsoft commitment to the strategy, saying Live was paralyzed and that the former Technorati man was not given the resources needed to roll out the program he managed for Microsoft.Rist writes: So where’s the beef for corporate America? Fortunately, it’s mostly in the nonbeta offerings. Microsoft Safety Center is first: a stable and surprisingly thorough malware checker and PC Health diagnostics check, free for the asking. It won’t replace corporate anti-virus, anti-spam, or even disk defragger applications, but it’s a great place to start a workstation diagnostic process. He sums up: Microsoft has made grand announcements on the future of the platform, including hints of a Web version of Microsoft Office and other Microsoft applications, but all of that is many moons away and certainly subject to change should market interest shift away from running everything through a browser. The here and now — for businesses, anyway — is a nice set of security and diagnostic tools and a very competitive Web and e-mail hosting service.Tell that to the newest PR tools on the block, Gmail-packin’ bloggers. Software Development