IIRC one reason was that Azure Active Directory bore little technical relation to Active Directory and it was endlessly confusing to customers. Especially as AA

IIRC one reason was that Azure Active Directory bore little technical relation to Active Directory and it was endlessly confusing to customers. Especially as AAD evolved into an identity system and away from a directory. Trivial example is that AAD doesnt do LDAP, unlike regular AD which was built on it. It's not surprising that some PM would keep "AD" in the name of AADto make the transition to cloud seem less scary, but after a few years its actively unhelpful as the majority of customers have made the switch to cloud based auth and identity.