Well, there’s obviously something about July 19th that makes companies want to get out of beta stage, because Windows Live Messenger is leaving beta today, Techcrunch reports. Again, its been in public beta for a while (six weeks), and I got on the private beta quite early on. Its a great product, equally significant for its new features and the fact that it is the first example of a rebranding of an MSN product out of beta. About a year since the Ray Ozzie memo saying that Google was a major challenger and had to be stopped, and the start of the Live initiative, this is the start of the rollout. Ray Ozzie has just taken over from Gates as Chief Software architect, so we can only expect his brainchild to go from strength to strength, possibly becoming a major revenue source for Microsoft in the future. The success or failure of the Live initiative will probably become clear in 2007, and with the release of Vista and Office 07, 2007 will be a crucial year. Again, read more in the press release.