Heh. There was no answer, per se...just some scowling (Also, I didn't get the job, but that might not have been related).

To be fair, there were some cool people in the group who knew the time of day -- one (very senior) fellow asked me point blank to enumerate the problems in Microsoft's online products, and was very intent on making sure that I defended my criticisms. We ended up having a really nice, long conversation about things like the shutdown of the IE team, and other blunders (such as the choice of "live.com" branding).

I think the closest thing I got to an answer, was that the decision came down from on high. There's something like 11 levels of management at Microsoft today; based on what I've seen and heard, the politics of that structure can overwhelm good taste.

In between being called "MSN" and "Live", it was "Windows Live". The idea was that MSN was a brand more oriented toward being an ISP or a portal (back when it looked like the internet companies to beat were AOL and Yahoo), and this re-branding would distance themselves from being either of those, and also help them leverage the Windows brand.

I don't know why they dropped the "Windows" part from the name though.