Microsoft's dumbest rebrand in its near 50 year history just got even dumber
Microsoft Office is one of the world's most recognizable brands, literally used by billions. The initial rebrand to "Microsoft 365" was dumb by itself, but yesterday, the firm notorious for terrible branding decisions predictably decided to double down.
Indeed, "hit and miss" is how I'd ultimately describe Microsoft's ability to actually name things. Xbox is cool, but Xbox One, Series X|S, Xbox 360? It all began to get a bit confusing. "Surface" is cool too, but somewhere along the way, Microsoft stopped giving them numbers, so now we have the Surface Pro "11th Edition" instead of simply the Surface Pro 11 (which is what most people search for anyway). I quite like the Microsoft Edge branding too. Then there's Windows itself, which is perhaps among the most recognizable brands and products in history.
Synonymous with Windows, for the past several decades, is its suite of productivity tools known to the vast majority of the globe as "Microsoft Office." At least, it used to be. A couple of years ago, Microsoft inexplicably rebranded it to "Microsoft 365," throwing away decades of brand recognition and removing the actual function of the product from its name. It's so dumb that Microsoft itself acknowledges the dumbness, having to list Microsoft 365 as "Microsoft 365 (Office)" on various app stores, because they know how much confusion they've created with their misguided name change.
