Amazon changes app logo that 'resembles Adolf Hitler' | Hacker News Reader

Amazon changes app logo that 'resembles Adolf Hitler'

bbc.com

18 pointsexec18 comments

There is a lot of subjectivity to what brains see. I don't blame Amazon for changing the logo if lots of people complained, but I'd be concerned that so many people made that connection.

People were mocking Amazon. Not complaining.

Whats wrong with this world and whats in the heads of people who see Adolf in the app logo :| Weird times.

All this overcorrection is just sad and infuriating. Nobody cares about these things anymore outside the self-righteous West.

“See we’re so good we will stamp out the remotest resemblance to the ABSOLUTE EVIL that WE defeated a century ago.”

People were mocking Amazon. Not offended.

Lolwut? Both look like tape, one cut from a dispenser and the other like a Post-It. You have to squint really hard at it and be looking for Godwin's law things to come to that conclusion.

One is reminded of the JC Penney teapot that looked like Hitler.

The semi irony is there is an art genre of objects called Confrontational Ceramics that intentionally seeks to offend. There is an actual Hitler teapot by Charles Krafft: http://www.charleskrafft.com/pitchfork-pals/charles_edits_we...

Another great example of why it's so hard to see the obvious flaws in something when you are too close to the product!

You think the Hitler imagery is obvious? I would have never seen it.

yeah I am still trying to find Hitler in that logo.

Well the article was nice enough to put a picture of Hitler next to the icon for comparison, just in case someone forgot what Hitler looked like.

I struggle to imagine this royal of an unforced error happening under Bezos. "Poor" Andy Jassy will certainly have his hands full, I reckon. Not that anyone doubts his prowess (he's historically known to be a very effective win at all costs businessman) but dare I say that he maybe will lack some of the foresight, acumen, and product instincts of Bezos?

I am reminded of Gates/Ballmer. But maybe I am overfitting here.

The original logo came out before Bezos stepped down.

I guess I'm not the only one overfitting. Bezos had de-facto stepped down for a while. It was only made official recently.

> ...but dare I say that he maybe will lack some of the foresight, acumen, and product instincts of Bezos?

If you'd ask around the leadership at Amazon, they'd say Andy Jassy is as close to a "co-founder" you're going to find.

Besides, one simply cannot found and run a business like AWS while also lacking foresight, acumen, and product instincts.

> I am reminded of Gates/Ballmer. But maybe I am overfitting here.

Andy allegedly was tapped up to run Microsoft at different points in his career. So, may be not...

Andy likes to say that in business, rarely does one catch lightening in a bottle (ie you need a lot of iterations before you get lucky), but Jeff Bezos did indeed catch one in Andy Jassy. I mean just listen to him talk: https://thedisruptivevoice.libsyn.com/60-overcoming-the-capi...

Please don't conflate a podcast with a vantage point from within the beast. There is a reason I accepted my offer in the first place. I did earnestly believe Jassy's ability to run AWS is relatively unparalleled, as it has been historically.

Strong as Jassy is, he is no Bezos. And I will say that AWS and retail are different beasts. For obvious reasons, I can't legally get into any more detail than that.

From a business perspective, this highlights the relative unimportance of logos.

Startup founders often obsess over things like logos.

A logo should not be offensive (which this logo apparently was to some).

Otherwise, no sane customer will choose or abandon your company because of its logo.

I didn't even know this specific Amazon logo existed until this kerfuffle happened. And I'm sure I'm far from the only one of their millions of customers who didn't even know this logo.

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