Why does Microsoft always create so many ugly, confusing, an...

Why does Microsoft always create so many ugly, confusing, and ridiculous product names? The worst of them all is ".Net" (which is really confusing).

Last Updated: 02.07.2025 00:30

But I mean, Microsoft was a pioneer in this field and is still the undisputed king of bad naming.

It’s not just Microsoft. Look at the way top AI companies these days name their foundation models.

*drumroll*

When Google released the next version of Gemini 1.5 Pro, they called it Gemini 1.5 Pro-002 (I wish I was joking, but I’m not).

And when Anthropic released the successor to Claude 3.5 Sonnet, they called it…

They didn’t even bother to change the name. What the fuck, guys.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

When OpenAI released their successor to GPT-4, they called it GPT-4o. Their next model after that was called o1.

Keep in mind, though, there are only two hard problems in software: Cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.

Why does Microsoft always create so many ugly, confusing, and ridiculous product names? The worst of them all is ".Net" (which is really confusing).