A Day of Rebranding: Office Web Apps to Get New Name?

It's been a day of new names, new promotions, and speculation about what's next at Microsoft. Early this morning, Microsoft announced the renaming of SkyDrive to OneDrive, and then little later further expanded the OneDrive moniker to state that there would be a OneDrive for consumers and a OneDrive for businesses. Doesn't that actually make it TwoDrives?

Right after the news hit the wires, the social media outlets were flooded with a maelstrom of folks wanting to guess new branding for other Microsoft services and also help Microsoft with their "One" marketing efforts.

One of the more memorable marketing efforts included:

Considering Microsoft had to rebrand SkyDrive due to the British Sky Broadcasting Group taking offense to the use of the word "Sky," I'm sure the LOTR reference would send up legal red flags almost immediately.

Clearly, the OneDrive name follows on the heels of Microsoft's new "One Microsoft" mantra, an effort to rebrand the entire company, to make it appear younger, sexy, and sassy. Even Microsoft's new gaming system is branded the Xbox One, falling in line with the company's image direction.

So, it was a little interesting to hear that my Eastern seaboard buddy Mary Jo Foley broke a rumor that Office Web Apps are also on the rebranding block.

OneOffice, you might think? No.

Through a series of supplied screenshots, Mary Jo reports that Microsoft may rename Office Web Apps to "Office Online," and then subsequently, each Office suite product would be renamed to: "Word Online," "Excel Online," "PowerPoint Online," and "OneNote Online."

Frankly, I don’t like it. I love the OneDrive name and it truly fits with Microsoft's overall image transformation. But, Office Online? It sounds like a page from the America Online (AOL) book. What's old is new again, I guess. I can't wait for Outlook.com to use the famous "you've got mail" to alert me to the latest spam.

What do you think?

In her article, Mary Jo also talks about some proposed Office Online feature and navigation enhancements, so it's worth taking a look: Microsoft Office Web Apps to be renamed 'Office Online'?

RodOne, signing out.