In a recent post from the Building Windows 8 blog, Steven Sinofsky describes the array of cloud services that will be available in the Windows 8 and Windows mobile worlds while also calling out that the “Live” brand won’t be part of those worlds.  In the post he describes the issues with the “Live” brand as follows.

While these results are certainly noteworthy, they still did not meet our expectations of a truly connected experience.  Windows Live services and apps were built on versions of Windows that were simply not designed to be connected to a cloud service for anything other than updates, and as a result, they felt “bolted on” to the experience. This created some amount of customer confusion, which is noted in several reviews and editorials.  The names we used to describe our products added to that complexity: we used “Windows Live” to refer to software for your PC (Windows Live Essentials), a suite of web-based services (Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Messenger), your account relationship with Microsoft (Windows Live ID), and a host of other offers.

While the name change is noteworthy, this doesn’t result in any less services available.  Most of the services are merely dropping the “Windows Live” or “Live” moniker and going forward with simpler names and Metro style apps for access, for example Windows Live Messenger becomes simply Messaging.  Microsoft appears to be using the disruptive impact of Windows 8 to clean up some of the branding missteps they’ve made over the past years. The chart below describes the changes.