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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

I know plenty of people who say "I'm getting an Uber", while using the Lyft app.

So Uber has definitely won in that department - all they have to do is not screw it up (any worse than they already did).

People will forget, and over time that name recognition will give them back the market share.

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There are plenty of examples of trademarks that became generic terms for product or services where the initial trademark owner did not dominate in that market very long. Heck I could argue a genericized trademark may be a bad thing and signify the lack of uniqueness in the service Uber provides if all other competitors are described using the same term.

>There are plenty of examples

Name five?

1) Kleenex 2) Google 3) Aspirin 4) Band-Aid 5) Jacuzzi 6) Post-It 7) Q-Tip 8) Sharpie 9) Taser 10) Xerox

I would argue that at least half of those don't qualify.

Kleenex, Google, Band-Aid, Post-It, Q-Tip, and Sharpie are all in a dominant position in their respective product categories. Off-brand examples of all of them exist, but all of my Sharpies are Sharpie brand, I use Q-Tip brand Q-Tips, I only Google with Yahoo or Bing when Google itself is down, and My Band-Aids are Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages.

Just this weekend I heard a friend say they "googled somebody on Facebook", meaning they searched for them in the Facebook search form. So it may have become a synonym for "online search" for some.

Also, I have used Post-Its all my life but did not even know until now that this was a company or product name.

While I think Post-Its are a potential candidate, I think your friend is just weird. I've only ever heard or used "google" as a verb to mean "performing a search via a web search engine to search the entirety of the internet", and even then it almost always includes the unspoken assumption that it will be done using Google.

I am not surprised by that usage. The are a lot of people for whom the difference between Google, Facebook, and Internet are not well understood.

Where are you? In new england I've never heard anyone call a tissue a kleenex.

Hmm. I've heard it in Maryland and California.

I hear it all the time around DC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

I'm from Boston and I've heard Kleenex all my life. Tissue sounds highfalutin.

That's hilarious because to me Kleenex sounds highfalutin, and tissue sounds normal.

And I actually use Kleenex brand!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

Aspirin, cellophane, kleenex, thermos, band-aid, crock pot, jacuzzi, photoshop, etc.

Shocking to me is that Tylenol is missing from that page. You hardly ever hear it called acetaminophen, even in hospitals.

Edit: Even the main Tylenol page links is ambiguous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tylenol

It's a wiki, so I'll guess I'll add it.

I think it's just a US thing, we (NZ) refer to it as paracetamol or the equivalent brand name "Panadol", the others are more globally used.

I wish it was more clear. There are three main widely available OTC medications that broadly cover main categories such as pain reliever, fever reducer, etc:

Ibuprofen (known colloquially more commonly as Motrin or Advil in the US)

Acetaminophen (also known by chemical name paracetemol outside of the US and brand name Tylenol in US)

Acetylsalicylic acid (also known as Aspirin, was previously a trademark but now a generic name)

I always try to avoid using the brand names in favor of the actual chemical names to dodge ambiguity and confusion (there are other brand names for acetaminophen, acetylsalicylic acid, and ibuprofen over the ones I have listed even in the US), but even then in the case of acetaminophen it cannot be avoided. Further compounding (pun intended?) difficulty is trying to pronounce acetylsalicylic acid to the layman instead of just saying "Aspirin". In the US at least, you can get away with saying ibuprofen vs "Motrin" and acetaminophen vs "Tylenol", but the Aspirin problem is a bit more of a difficult hurdle to overcome in terms of layman's communication.

Slightly tangentially, when referring to airports I even have the same problem. I always try to go by IATA airport code, but those apparently have ambiguities as well: AUS is the IATA airport code for Austin-Bergstrom, but in ICAO terms it's actually known as KAUS, presumably to avoid conflict with other airports outside the US who might also answer to the callsign "AUS"

I always found it interesting that zipper was a trademarked and then genericized name. Mainly b/c it's a verb that accurately describes what the product does.

Actually, as best I can tell, "zip[per]" didn't have that meaning (combine two lines in succession at some moving point of contact) until the product existed, so the verb only exists because of the product. Before that, it just meant "move quickly".

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ZIP

The Aspirin trademark, along with Heroin, was stolen from them after WW1.

Photoshop refers to Photoshop, made by Adobe. The rest are accurate though.

Photoshop is clearly a generic name nowadays, you can say that you photoshopped an image regardless of the software itself.

I think it was intended to be a list of generic names whose company isn't in an overwhelmingly superior position. Adobe Photoshop is still the >95% dominant image editor.

Well, in terms of profit/revenue, Photoshop still absolutely dominates to my knowledge. Latest stat I could find was 90% in 2010. http://www.dispatch.com/article/20100301/NEWS/303019733

Across a variety of contexts:

Hoover Kleenex Photoshop Xerox Band-Aid

To the other examples add Velcro (R).

zamboni

Yeah, it's a commodity, Lyft and Uber are perfectly interchangeable ime. I just call them all "cabs".

Lyft is a homonym of "lift", and "getting a lift" has been used for decades (or longer?) to mean being driven somewhere by someone. Saying Uber conveys more information, so people say that.

Still a branding win from Uber.

I use "uber" when I really mean "lyft" - ie "Want to get an Uber?" is much more clear than "Want to get a Lyft"? I think any other more recognizable name would have been a plus for Lyft.

ditto. Lyft, pronounced of course as lift is a bad name for a company/service. Astonishing as the company first launched as Zimride.

ps. I take Lyft 99 % of the time, for years already. Every industry needs an underdog to keep the big guys on their toes. In particular shady ones.

You don't say "taxi"? It's just as short, starts with a consonant, not ambiguous, translates between cities, is obviously generic, doesn't give mindshare to a nasty company and contains the letter "X"...

The only downside I can come up with is that "taxiing to" is more awkward to say than "ubering to". As Calvin says, though, "Verbing weirds language."

The obvious problem here is that taxi or cab to most people means the thing with a light on top that you raise your hand to hail.

Converesly, most of the people I know say "get a Lyft" and mean Lyft. I don't really think this is universal.

Unless they lose their trademark because it becomes genericized.

I do this, mainly because “I’ll get a Lyft” can confuse people.

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