> Putting your application inside your company name was (is?) part of the guidelines from Microsoft.

That was part of the Windows 3.1 guidelines. On Windows 95, Microsoft's guidelines specified that your applications were to appear as single icons under the Programs menu. Unfortunately, most almost all developers ignored that and continued doing things the Win3.1 way.

One possible rationale: companies tend to specialize in one specific software domain, so you would end up with your graphic design software under Adobe folder, your Quake games grouped under idSoftware, and your databases grouped under Oracle.

The rationale was that on Windows 3.1, the company would put all of their stuff, not just the program executable, in the Program Group.

So not only would you have the program, but you'd also have the readme and the uninstaller and anything else that goes along with the program.

When Windows 95 came out, Microsoft wanted to hide all of that. The new guideline was to just put the program in the root level of the Programs menu, leave the uninstaller up to the new Add/Remove Programs control panel, and if you want the readme or whatever, go hunt for it yourself. But unfortunately most developers ignored it. They continued building Windows 3.1-style Program Groups the same way they always did.

And, yes, the Programs menu used the same backend as Program Manager. What appeared in one appeared in the other.