SAN FRANCISCO—Microsoft today announced the name for the next version of Windows: not Windows 9 but Windows 10.

Terry Myerson, executive vice president for the Operating System Group, said that the new release represented such a shift in Microsoft's approach to delivering Windows and in what Windows will be—able to span everything from an Internet-of-Things gizmo to a phone to a tablet to a PC to a server—that calling it Windows 9 wouldn't be big enough to capture the differences.

Given the rest of the company's One-themed branding (Xbox One, OneDrive, OneNote, and such), Myerson said that calling the new OS Windows One was logical—but it turns out that a guy called Bill Gates already did that back in the 1980s. So the company went for Windows 10 instead.

Apple did the same thing with its OS more than a decade ago and has stayed there ever since. Microsoft's new brand opens the door to both major desktop operating systems being version ten... forever.