Every company kills products from time to time, that’s undeniable. In some cases, the public’s reaction is minimal, while in others it causes a real uproar. The Redmond giant is not immune to this, and there is even a portal called Killed by Microsoft that documents all the products and services Microsoft has killed in the past. Some of the names there carry a lot of history, while others qualify as true shooting stars…
Some companies carefully evaluate the interruption of a service or cancellation of a product, but there are also cases that go to the opposite extreme. One of the most striking examples is Google, which has a terrible reputation. Every time Mountain View announces something new, the web responds with comments like “I can’t wait to see them cancel it in six months”, and its decisions only perpetuate that toxic cycle.
In contrast, Microsoft usually receives complaints for not canceling anything and providing support to products that stopped being popular years ago. However, that’s a half-truth. The Redmond giant has not hesitated to swing the scythe, sometimes traumatically and disruptively for users. The Killed by Microsoft portal presents a list of products and services Microsoft has killed to date, and the occasional entry scheduled to disappear. Let’s look at some famous cases:
Zune
We must be honest here: the specs of the Zune players were anything but weak. But Apple poured its heart and soul into its iPod line, while Microsoft showed a serious lack of determination and consistency issues on both hardware and software. The players died in 2011, and the last Zune services pulled the plug in November 2015.
Microsoft Lumia
Microsoft not only wasted a good opportunity to establish itself as an alternative to the Android-iOS duopoly, but also spent a fortune in the process. The saddest part is that the Lumia devices weren’t bad. Their most serious problem was that from the start they suffered from a lack of a developed ecosystem, and that leads us to…
Windows Phone
When Windows Phone was getting interesting, Microsoft decided to announce Windows 10 Mobile. The lack of updates for popular devices (like the Lumia 520), combined with developers abandoning the platform, and the war declared by some companies (Google and Snapchat come to mind) ripped the soul out of Windows Phone. Its replacement, Windows 10 Mobile, was discontinued in 2017 and declared EoL in January 2020.
Microsoft Kin
There are even darker stories of products killed by Microsoft in the mobile space, and one of them is the Kin. The idea was to launch a series of devices aimed especially at young social media users, with different contracts available under Verizon Wireless. The Kin phones lasted 48 days on the market. Microsoft canceled the European launch, stopped production, and disposed of the remaining units as feature phones.
Microsoft Encarta
The disappearance of the Encarta encyclopedia hit us closer because we basically grew up with it. It was a fabulous 16-year adventure, but in 2009 Microsoft recognized that the way we search for information had completely changed. Technically, the 62,000 articles available in Encarta were behind a paywall, while Wikipedia already offered almost three million free articles.
Microsoft Kinect
A strange bird if there ever was one, the Kinect found more popularity in labs and other experimentation spaces than in our living rooms. Microsoft confirmed in October 2017 that Kinect units would no longer be manufactured, and its formal retirement was materialized in early 2018. However, Microsoft didn’t end up empty-handed: the Kinect was a success in terms of accessibility, and the feedback received led to the creation of the excellent Xbox Adaptive Controller.
Windows Movie Maker
Boo Microsoft, boo! Windows Movie Maker was the first video editing experience for millions of users, and despite its technical limitations, many find themselves missing its simplicity. Movie Maker went under the guillotine in January 2017 and was replaced by the video editor in Microsoft Photos.
PixelSense
Some of our readers might remember it better as the original Surface. Microsoft showed those interactive tables endlessly, which made us dream of fabulous tabletop role-playing sessions, although their goal was always commercial use. Microsoft never stopped using the PixelSense brand, but the technology now exists under the Surface family as Surface Hub.
Killed by Microsoft: Click here
