Big Knife Department is one of the nicknames people give Microsoft.
When the nickname began to be used is hard to figure out, but the reason for the name is very simple — as one of the world's largest technology companies, Microsoft has cut many interesting or excellent products since its inception, many of which people love.
The amazing Windows Phone, the MSN that a generation remembers, the "Minecraft Earth" that brought happiness to countless people... Recently, developers have built a collection page for these cut products Killed by Microsoft, each project linked to the corresponding Wikipedia page or information for people to remember.
From 1992 to 2021, Microsoft abandoned many products, many of which had brilliant moments.
The longest-lived and shortest-lived product
**Internet Toilet**
The Killed by Microsoft page currently features 75 products, spanning from 1992 to 2021, with each offering operating for varying lengths, with the shortest operating product being the iLoo wireless portable toilet, which lasted only 13 days.
In 2003, Microsoft UK issued a press release announcing the introduction of a mobile Internet toilet, which supports wireless WiFi capabilities, and is also equipped with a corresponding screen and keyboard, and even toilet paper is printed with a WEB address, aiming to promote Internet popularity.
▲ iloo prototype
However, as soon as the news came out, it immediately triggered controversy, and even some people thought that Microsoft was deceived, how to see the iLoo wireless toilet is not reliable, how to ensure the cleanliness of the toilet, keyboard, screen, in case people queue up?
Soon Microsoft said that the iLoo project had been stopped, and on May 12 of the same year, it announced that it was an April Fool's Day event for the British branch, just a month late, and I am afraid that most people will regard it as onion news.
Perhaps even Microsoft did not expect that sitting on the toilet to play mobile phones and brush short videos has indeed become people's daily routine.
**Microsoft Streets and Travel**
There are the shortest and the longest, and Microsoft Streets & Trips is the longest-lived product, running for 26 years from 1988 to 2013.
Streets & Trips supports maps of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and across Europe, and provides people with travel route planning capabilities that are tied to Windows PCs.
Until now, Windows 10 systems have a maps program similar to Streets & Trips, which can be used offline by downloading map data.
However, in the face of rapidly advancing products such as Google Maps, Streets & Trips is still slightly behind, and finally Microsoft announced the retirement of the product in 2013.
Those impressive software products
**Microsoft Encarta**
Creative Commons was once seen as a symbol of the spirit of the Internet, and many Internet companies have tried to launch products similar to online museums and encyclopedias, and Microsoft is no exception.
▲ Microsoft Encata was once sold as a disc
Microsoft Encata since its release in 1993, during the cd disk, online subscription, online (including advertising) and other forms of change, its content is generally derived from the local encyclopedia products, and then summarized and compiled, by 2008 Encarta has 62,000 rich articles.
It was only with the popularity of free products such as Wikipedia that Microsoft Encata was affected, and even the change from a paid subscription to a free but advertised version did not continue to attract consumers, and finally ceased operations in 2009.
**MSN Messenger**
In 1999, Microsoft launched the instant messaging service MSN Messenger, thanks to the popularity of computers and Microsoft's absolute dominance on computer systems, the software soon reached the computers of families, and people opened the era of online communication through it.
▲ Image courtesy of world-today-news
Even more than the Windows system, Microsoft has poured great resources into MSN Messenger, macOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and other major operating systems can see the figure of this software.
At the same time, MSN Messenger's own functions have also been greatly enriched during this period, such as binding social services such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc., you can access the complete content within MSN Messenger, and even promote message interop operations, open up Facebook chat, and the two applications can exchange messages.
This also led to a rapid increase in MSN Messenger users, and by 2009 Microsoft announced that it had reached a staggering 330 million monthly active users.
▲ Image from: Slidebean
However, the popularity of various Internet applications and even mobile devices, so that MSN Messenger is somewhat overwhelmed, in the United States there is Facebook, there are QQ and other rapidly developing competitors, and finally Microsoft began to phase out in 2013, only the national MSN Messenger service ran for 18 months, and officially stopped operating on October 31, 2014.
**Minecraft Earth**
Minecraft Earth is a bit special among the many products that have been cut by Microsoft, and it originally had the opportunity to "live" longer and better.
Released in 2019, the game has been launched in 26 countries and regions around the world, and people can use mobile phones, tablets, and arborvitae technology to walk around collecting materials and items, building life-size buildings and items in the AR world, and even taking risks.
As a free-to-play game and one of the spin-offs of the Minecraft series, the high quality of the game quickly attracted a large wave of players, and Time Magazine even ranked it as one of the 100 best inventions of 2019.
However, the epidemic disrupted the pace of Minecraft Earth, and finally Microsoft had to announce that it would stop operating the game in 2021.
**Wunderlist**
In the field of efficiency tools, Wunderlist is definitely the first echelon of products, from the Windows desktop to iOS and Android mobile, it is one of the first To Do time management applications to use multi-terminal synchronization.
In 2013 and 2014, Wunderlist won the Google Play Best App and Apple Best App awards, respectively, which is enough to illustrate the quality of its products. Perhaps seeing the brilliance of The Amazing List, Microsoft announced in 2015 that it was acquiring it for $100 million.
However, after the acquisition, Microsoft hoped to develop its own brand to Do application, "Wunderlist" was gradually shelved, and even christian Reber, the founder of this application, could not bear to express to Microsoft that he wanted to buy back the product.
▲ Microsoft To Do
In the end, "Wunderlist" came to an end, and Microsoft launched a new "Microsoft To Do" app to replace it.
Renowned hardware
**Windows Phone and Lumia**
When it comes to Windows Phone and Lumia phones, it is more a pity that as one of the world's largest technology companies, Microsoft has devoted almost all its efforts to these two products, competing with Apple and Google.
Windows Phone's iconic tile, so that the icon and information in one, the tile is not only a software icon, but also can display software-related notifications, greatly improving efficiency, the simple design of the block can also make it easier to pay attention to the content, typical efficient design.
▲ Image from: dixplore
Lumia, acquired from Nokia, is also quite eye-catching in hardware, and the mobile phone shell built of plastic materials is quite textured in both the feel and the visual feel.
Nowadays, mobile phone manufacturers will "image" as a high-end must compete, in fact, as early as 2013, Microsoft enabled the 41 million pixel rear camera in Lumia 1020, which is the earliest batch of camera stacking manufacturers.
▲Lumia 1020 . Image credit: Windows central
However, Windows Phone has not been able to make up for the weakness of the software ecology, and even spawned the "I am 1%" joke, compared to Android and iOS, the Windows Phone ecology has too few high-quality applications, which also makes it and Lumia stop in 2017.
**Kinect**
Kinect is a typical "unintentional willow willow" product, originally Microsoft was the Xbox 360 game console and it bundled to sell, to promote the development of xbox platform somatosensory games, competing with Nintendo and Sony.
However, Kinect is bundled with the console as a peripheral accessory, and the higher cost prompted Microsoft to raise the price of the entire console, and the Xbox One bundled Kinect price is $100 more expensive than the rival Sony PS4, which is $499.
The high price also indirectly led to the xbox one sales lag in meeting the target, Microsoft had to announce the end of bundling, but this also led to the use of Kinect players reduced, developers are reluctant to develop games for it.
This does not mean that Kinect is a failed product, compared to the depth ranging sensor products on the market, it is cheaper, which also makes it popular in cutting-edge fields such as academic and technological research, some people use Kinect and robots to determine the size and distance of obstacles, to ensure that it can move normally.
There are many similar cases, and there are still Open Source projects in Kinect that are still in operation.
Looking at the 75 products that Microsoft abandoned, many of them now exist in new forms, such as the Windows Reader app, which was originally used to read PDF files and is now replaced by the Edge browser.
Skype for Business was replaced by Microsoft Teams, a cloud-based collaboration platform, and MSN News was replaced directly by My News... From Windows XP to today's Windows 11, Microsoft abandoned a large number of products, and a more modern design and more comprehensive functionality were reproduced in the new system.
Technology is developing rapidly, whether it is hardware or software, "the day of expiration" always comes so quickly, but those interesting designs, products that accompany people to create will always be remembered, which product that was abandoned by Microsoft impressed you, may wish to come to the comment area to talk?