Microsoft Graveyard: last honor for dead Microsoft products

February 7, 2024

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Microsoft Graveyard: last honor for dead Microsoft products

You may have heard of Google Graveyard. A website dedicated to all the products and services that Google terminated over the years. Google Podcasts is one of the latest products in the graveyard. Microsoft Graveyard is the Microsoft pendant to Google Graveyard.

The Microsoft Graveyard features a long list of Microsoft products and services that the company shut down in its long history. Some of the listed products are on their last leg, but not dead yet.

Note: there is also Killed by Microsoft, which offers similar information.

The products are sorted chronologically on the Microsoft Graveyard. The very first product listed is Microsoft Bob. The project’s aim was to provide a user-friendlier interface for Microsoft’s operating systems, which were Windows 95 and NT at the time. Bob was designed for novice computer users. It featured cartoon characters and rooms that users could visit.

Bob did not gain wide acceptance with users and Microsoft canceled the project less than one year after its release in 1995.

The first years are dominated by Microsoft operating systems. The list of operating systems begins with Windows 1.0, which Microsoft kept alive until 2001.

Popular operating systems, such as MS-DOS, Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows 7 are found on the list. Obviously, there are also less popular versions of Windows on the list. There is Windows Millennium Edition and Windows 8, for instance, which were not exactly fan favorites.

The newest operating system on the list is Windows 10, which Microsoft plans to retire in October 2025 officially for home users. Still, even home users may extend support by at least three years through the Windows 10 Extended Security Updates program.

The majority of products and services are not operating systems. The graveyard lists software and hardware products, as well as Microsoft companies and studios.

MSN Music, for example, lasted just 2 years before it was shut down by Microsoft in 2006. It was designed to compete with Apple’s iTunes service and store, but failed to attract enough attention.

Other highlights include Clippy, an annoying Office assistant, the artificial intelligence bot Tay, which lasted just a single day due to inflammatory tweets, or Tay’s successor Zo, which survived 4 years.

The graveyard lists hardware products as well. Besides the original Xbox console and Xbox 360, it lists Windows Phone and Lumia devices, Microsoft Kinect, Band, and Microsoft Zune. Come to think of it, I did own all of these products, with the exception of Microsoft Zune.

Several game developers and studios are also on the list. It includes Ensemble Studios, known for its RTS games, Aces Game Studio, which worked on Microsoft Flight Simulator, or Lionhead Studios, known for Fable and Black & White.

Microsoft Graveyard is an open source project. You may contribute to the project on GitHub.

Closing Words

Microsoft Graveyard offers a trip down memory lane. Some will no doubt ask how Microsoft could have abandoned some of the listed products. Windows Phone was the best mobile operating system after all, right?

Now You: any product, service or studio that you are particularly sad about to find on the list?

Summary