Windows Server 2003 isn"t the only Microsoft product that no longer sports the .Net brand name.
Microsoft seems to have learned a lesson from decision to remove ".Net" from the Windows Server 2003 name: Don"t invite publicity around an acknowledgement that your publicity crew went overboard. As a result, the software giant is continuing its drive to clarify and trim back its .Net naming convention. But rather than doing so with a lot of fanfare, Microsoft is reducing quietly its use of the term.
Earlier this month, Microsoft changed the name of MapPoint. The first of Microsoft"s XML Web services is now known as plain-old MapPoint, rather than MapPoint.Net. Steve Lombardi, technical product manager with the MapPoint business unit, confirms the .Net naming police called in the dogs earlier this year. "With the .Net in there, it seemed too closely tied to .Net," says Lombardi. "And we have folks using MapPoint with Java and Linux."
It also looks as if Microsoft also has dropped the .Net from the name of its back-end enterprise server family.