From the “Somebody on the Internet said so” department: Following a blog post on Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows, Microsoft Windows Azure customers are suddenly worried that Redmond has axed the “Azure” brand for its enterprise cloud services.

Thurrott reported that the news came not in the form of a press release, blog entry, or executive interview, but in the form of a message to Azure customers, explaining that – for instance – Windows Azure Compute would be renamed “Cloud Services,” AppFabric Cache would become simply “Cache,” and SQL Azure would become “SQL Database.”

But it seems that the only people who will ever see those new names are users of the Azure billing portal, because in a tweet, the Windows Azure team explained: “Per our recent customer letter, we r simplifying service naming in billing statements. This doesn’t affect the #Windows #Azure name or brand”

And a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley: “Microsoft continues to invest in the Windows Azure brand and we are committed to delivering an open and flexible cloud platform that enables customers to take advantage of the cloud. We have no additional information to share at this time.”

So there you have it. Windows Azure isn’t going away any time soon, which is unsurprising. Despite being “the world’s most misunderstood cloud,” Azure’s impressive momentum in opening the door to open source technologies has earned it a sizable fanbase in the developer and service provider spheres. Simplifying billing statements is one thing, but it would be very silly of Microsoft to ditch the brand entirely.