Not all the time it's called "Microsoft". Like Apple ditched "Macintosh", Ms needs a cool name. They need a name that sounds more natural with softer constants. Just from a psychological point of view. Microsoft feels synonymous with offices and people with suits on labouring through the day, whereas Apple has more of a feeling of the outdoors, coffee shops and cafés, wine bars, people in jeans and a sweatshirt. Apple just has that personal, family and friends vibe, rather than the colleagues and co-worker vibe of MS. MS is the labouring employee, Apple is the upper management having meetings on the golf course. Microsoft is bringing your work home, where Apple is working the way you want, when you want. Plus you say Microsoft to someone like my grandparents, it immediately sounds like whatever it is will be complicated and you need a degree to operate it, whereas Google or Apple just ooze simplicity and ease of use.
I believe it's the biggest thing holding MS back. The need to rebrand, or spilt off with a consumer division. Separate Windows for the home with Windows for the work place. The only things cool about MS are the things where Microsoft isn't really there in the name, like Xbox and Groove. It's like if theres a guy down the road with the name Hitler or Ghengis, could be the nicest guy in the world, but if you find out his name before you meet him, you're going to be hard pressed to not have a slight presumption that they are a little evil.
Although things are slowly turning around for MS, there's still the preconception from hearing the name. They could reinvent themselves and remove all of that instantly with a simple name change or seemingly separate new consumer division.