14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Longhorn was at one point a super-ambitious project that was supposed to transform the world of Windows completely, but Microsoft at one point decided the whole thing is not worth it and eventually abandoned many of the ideas that were meant to be part of the operating system.
Longhorn Live is one of them, and a video shared on YouTube by BetaCollector provides us with a closer look at everything, showing that Microsoft wanted the new OS to come with a built-in social network.
At a time when MySpace was pretty much what Facebook is today, Longhorn Live was supposed to make it easier for people to create pages where they could share stuff they wanted others to see, such as photos and various posts.
For Microsoft, this idea originally made plenty of sense, especially because it was part of a modern experience that it wanted to be included in Windows from the very beginning. But on the other hand, a social component would have made the operating system a fully consumer-oriented product, and as we know already, this is no longer the key focus for Microsoft.
Windows Longhorn never came to be
Windows has become an operating system that’s aimed at everyone and can do everything, and while Microsoft does own a social network today, this one has a completely different purpose. LinkedIn is unlikely to ever become a part of Windows, though it could eventually benefit from deeper integration into other Microsoft products.
At the end of the day, this video shows Windows Longhorn would have been a super-advanced product for its time, and without a doubt, it would have increased the lead in the operating system race if it eventually received the green light.
For now, however, Longhorn remains a product that never came to be, and we should expect more such videos to surface in the coming future.
