Microsoft Tag

Overview

Microsoft Tag was a mobile-tagging (barcode-scanning) service operated by Microsoft and built on the HCCB (High Capacity Color Barcode) symbology ¹. A Tag was a small grid of coloured triangles — Microsoft's proprietary alternative to the QR Code — that, when scanned with the Microsoft Tag reader app, acted as a "machine readable web link": the app sent the scanned code to a Microsoft server, which returned the publisher's intended URL or content ¹. The service was offered free of charge and was aimed primarily at print advertising and magazine campaigns ¹³.

History

Microsoft Tag launched in 2009 as the consumer deployment of HCCB, the colour-triangle barcode developed by Gavin Jancke at Microsoft Research ¹. It was provided as a free service, with code generation and scan analytics available to commercial and noncommercial users at no cost ¹. On 19 August 2013, Microsoft announced it would wind the service down, scheduling termination for exactly two years later, on 19 August 2015 ¹². Microsoft selected Scanbuy and its ScanLife platform to support Microsoft Tag technology and offer existing customers a migration path toward standard QR codes, with that support beginning 18 September 2013 ¹²⁴. Basic transition was offered free, with premium migration packages priced from $69 per month ³.

Technical specification

• Symbology. Microsoft Tag is a deployment of HCCB; a Tag is rendered as 4 colours arranged in a 5 × 10 grid of triangular symbols, and also works in a monochrome (black-and-white) form ¹.
• Cloud resolution (indirection). Unlike a QR Code, which can encode a URL directly, a Microsoft Tag did not itself carry the destination. The reader app sent the scanned HCCB data to a Microsoft server, which looked up the Tag ID and returned the publisher's intended URL, so all Tags depended on Microsoft's online service to resolve ¹.
• Customisation. Because the payload was an opaque ID resolved server-side, publishers could restyle Tags with custom colours and images while keeping them scannable ²³.

Use cases

Microsoft Tag was marketed for print and advertising — magazines, posters and product packaging — where a reader could scan the Tag to reach a campaign landing page, promotion or media information ¹³. As a layer over HCCB, it inherited HCCB's intended association with audiovisual works (films and games) and the ISAN identifier ecosystem ¹.

Implementations

There were no public, open Microsoft Tag implementations. Generating and resolving Tags required Microsoft's hosted service and the proprietary reader app; the symbology (HCCB) was never released as an open library or freely implementable specification ¹. After shutdown, continuity was provided only through Scanbuy's commercial ScanLife platform, not an open codebase ²⁴.

Comparison

Microsoft Tag competed directly with the open QR Code. Its advantage was the colour density of the underlying HCCB symbology and brand-customisable code art ¹³. Its decisive disadvantages were that it required a proprietary reader and a cloud lookup to resolve every scan, whereas a QR Code is an open ISO standard that encodes its URL directly and needs no vendor server ¹². Commentators attributed the failure to weak adoption: QR codes themselves had limited consumer uptake, and a proprietary alternative had even less chance ²⁴. In the open-colour-2D lineage, the successor analogue is the unlicensed, ISO-standardised JAB Code, which delivers colour-boosted capacity without any server dependency ⁵.

Fun facts

• A Microsoft Tag carried no destination data of its own — scanning one was useless without Microsoft's resolution server, which is precisely why every Tag stopped working when the service closed in 2015 ¹.
• Microsoft gave a two-year notice (announced 2013, closing 2015) and outsourced the afterlife of its own format to a QR-code company, ScanLife/Scanbuy ²⁴.

Status

Discontinued. The Microsoft Tag service was announced for closure on 19 August 2013 and shut down on 19 August 2015, after which existing Tags ceased to resolve; users were directed to migrate to Scanbuy's ScanLife QR-code platform ¹²⁴.

Sources

1. High Capacity Color Barcode — Wikipedia, accessed 2026
2. Microsoft Tag closing on August 19th 2015 — Engadget, 2013
3. Microsoft Gives Up On Its Tag Barcode Service, Schedules It For Shutdown In 2015 — TechCrunch, 2013
4. Microsoft To Shut Down The Microsoft Tag Service In Two Years — MSPoweruser, 2013
5. JAB Code — Wikipedia, accessed 2026

Deployments

No country reports mention this standard by name.

Regions / aggregations not mapped to a single country

• Universal