Opinion Wait? What? I was just cruising along the information superhighway – yes, I'm old, deal with it – when I spotted a Y Combinator story announcing, "Microsoft Office renamed to 'Microsoft 365 Copilot app'." Excuse me!? I looked closer and found that, sure enough, it certainly looked like Microsoft had renamed Office to the God-awful "Microsoft 365 Copilot."

A deeper dive revealed that while Microsoft had successfully confused people across the internet, Redmond hadn't actually renamed Microsoft 365. Not yet, anyway. I mean, they're slapping the Copilot label on everything else, and they've integrated it into Office, excuse me, Microsoft 365, why not Microsoft 365 Copilot?

What really happened was that Microsoft changed the Microsoft 365 Copilot app product page to read, and I quote, "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share, and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps, now including Copilot."

Sure sounds like they've changed the name, doesn't it? What actually happened was that the "Office" Microsoft was referring to here was an ancient 2019 Office app that directed users to the free online versions of Office programs. Microsoft had made this change many months ago, but no one had noticed until recently, hence all the confusion.

Oh, and by the way, the latest version of the Office standalone software suite, Microsoft Office 2024, is still with us. There may be another PC-centric version after that, but I wouldn't bet on it.

This isn't the first time Microsoft has confounded loyal users. Take Copilot itself. Microsoft now uses the single Copilot brand for very different offerings: Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Copilot in Windows, Copilot for Security, and more. Each has its own capabilities, pricing, and integration with the rest of the Microsoft software suite. It's so bad that the National Advertising Division (NAD), part of the Better Business Bureau, found that Microsoft's "Copilot" branding was misleading. You think!

Indeed, Microsoft has a long history of bad branding. For example, the Enterprise and SMB Office subscriptions have repeatedly been renamed: Office 365 ProPlus to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise; Office 365 Business to Microsoft 365 Business. And we can't forget Microsoft's switch from Lync to Skype to Skype for Business, and finally to Teams. These layered branding changes came on top of shifts in backends and feature sets, adding to users' puzzlement.

Last but not least, my Microsoft programming buddies have faced nigh unto endless confusion about Microsoft's .NET branding. It's bewildered developers for years because names, version numbers, and even the meaning of ".NET" itself have changed multiple times. The result is persistent ambiguity about which runtime or framework is being discussed at a given moment. For ages, developers have had to distinguish between .NET Framework (Windows‑only, up to 4.8), .NET Core (cross‑platform, up to 3.1), and .NET Standard (a shared API spec), all branded with ".NET" but referring to very different things.

As bad as Microsoft is at naming its products, there are far worse out there. I mean, bad names and all, Microsoft hasn't lost money. That's not the case with Elon Musk renaming Twitter to X. By replacing a globally understood verb, "tweet," and a distinctive bird icon with a generic letter, Twitter lost its hard‑won product identity. This, in turn, helped ruin Twitter's finances. Analyst estimates suggest X's global ad revenue dropped by about 46 percent, from about $4.5 billion in 2022 to roughly $2.2 billion in 2023 after the rebrand. The company still hasn't recovered. Currently, Twitter's estimated revenue is around $2.9 billion.

It also hasn't helped that the "X" site has become, as the Financial Times put it, "the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter." I know Musk got some kind of prepubescent boy pleasure out of renaming the site to X, but as far as business goes, the move looks ever more stupid by the day.

Other major tech companies also have a way of making terrible branding decisions. For example, the Facebook-to-Meta rename was framed as a visionary pivot to the metaverse. Even then, it was seen as a reputation escape hatch amid leaks, antitrust pressure, and a collapse in trust. Now, the metaverse, which never saw any pickup, is seen as a failure as its funding within the company keeps being cut back. These days, the metaverse is little more than a bad joke, along with Non-Fungible Token (NFT) art.

Far less dramatic, but just as pointless, was Alphabet's creation as Google's holding company. Even stock market players who swear by the Magnificent Seven call it Alphabet (Google).

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It's in the intersection of technology and entertainment, though, that we find two of the dumbest rebrands.

First, there was Netflix, which briefly spun off its DVD‑by‑mail business as Qwikster. "Q what?" you ask? Exactly. This move forced customers to juggle two brands, two sites, and two bills, with no benefits whatsoever. The backlash was immediate and severe. Netflix reversed the decision within weeks. Today, the only people who remember it are marketing professionals, where "Qwikster" is shorthand for avoidable, self‑inflicted brand damage.

Far more recently, there was Warner Bros. Discovery's brain-dead decision to drop "HBO" from HBO Max. Why anyone thought that dumping a premium, decades‑old brand was a good idea is beyond me. HBO's tagline, "It's not TV. It's HBO," became synonymous with top production values, creative freedom for writers and directors, and risk‑taking, adult storytelling in shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and Game of Thrones. To dump that brand in an increasingly competitive online streaming market was beyond stupid. It took two years to reverse course. That was two years too long.

I know in tech circles people like to dismiss marketing and branding as irrelevant. It's not. If people are confused about exactly what you're offering, they won't spend money on your products or services.

The companies I mentioned here were all big enough to survive their branding blunders. Yours may not be so lucky, so take your time and get your naming and logos right. ®