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Comment by jaywalk | Hacker News Reader

Oh yes, one of the steps large companies inevitably take after their reputation is tarnished beyond repair. The problem here is that nobody cares what the parent company of Facebook is called, just like nobody cares what the parent company of Google is called. It's Facebook and Google.

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Isn't this really just a Google > Alphabet kind of change? I assume there will be a new umbrella that FB, IG and WApp will just be things inside as well as pushing things like Oculus at more of a separate concern.

Feels like Google had a valid reason, unlike Facebook, who seems to be only doing it because of PR issues.

I wonder if this structure also helps with reduced risk for antitrust cases succeeding.

I feel like the actual anti-trust risk is lower than people expect/want.

Isnt it just unfounded speculation that it is for pr? To me it makes sense for the same reasons google did it.

It sure does make sense, but the timing is hard to ignore. Either way, you are right, indeed it is unfounded speculation, hence why I said "who seems to be only doing it because of PR issues."

This seems like terrible timing if they are doing it for PR, since Facebook is currently in the thick of a negative news cycle that will immediately tarnish the new brand. The stories will all say: Facebook is evil, and also changing its name. It would make more sense to wait for the press to die down first.

How would one "prove" the reason they changed their name is for PR? A company would never outright say "Our reputation is terrible so we are trying to trick everybody by coming up with a new name to redirect attention."

Google did it because they were structuring businesses that matured out of Google X - like Verily & Waymo. Facebook doesn't have such a similar business reason. Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook are all in the social media space and all relate to each other. The alleged reason "to rebrand under a Metaverse umbrella" makes it clear this is a very different reason compared to what Google did.

>Google did it because they were structuring businesses that matured out of Google X - like Verily & Waymo. Facebook doesn't have such a similar business reason.

Facebook hasn't even announced their reasons, they haven't announced anything at all. You fail to mention their plays in the VR and AR space which to me makes this pretty clear and similar to the google reasons.

And honestly - nobody calls Google anything but Google. These sorts of renames requires that the main line of business actually shrink relative to the company which strikes me as highly unlikely for both Google and Facebook.

Alphabet's name change was part of a corporate and equity (shares) restructuring and also a change of the executive leadership guard and/or board, no? Perhaps that's going on at Facebook too. I don't think it is incidental that Facebook is already in the headlines and has other PR issues at the moment. Kind of goes without saying...

One renaming I can recall is Philip Morris -> Altria, although apparently a new Philip Morris was spun off, so it exists again.

Barely anyone knows Chiquita used to be the infamous United Fruit Company, so it can work.

I bet barely anyone would care if it was still United Fruit Company.

If Googling your company name also brought up a bunch of See Also links to various genocides and military coups, the company executives would certainly care.

In an age of ethical consumerism, it's undeniable that not breaking with the past would've had a significant impact on their profits.

Maybe, but there are a lot of companies with negative links, although perhaps not to the level of UFC's genocide or military coups. Nike, IBM, Mercedes, etc. Either way, management would have changed twice or thrice over by now. But I would still guess the vast majority of people do not care how their bananas got to them as long as they are 49 cents per pound or their avocados regardless of which Mexican cartel sent them.

Does anyone really think clothing brands are avoiding Xinjiang cotton if their product still comes from China or another south/east Asian country?

Googling "United Fruit Company" doesn't give any Related searches that mention genocides or coups for me. OTOH, the very first thing when googling Chiquita is "People also ask... Is Chiquita a bad company?" with an answer that is basically "yes".

Genocide might be pushing it, but DuckDuckGo [1] first result is a Wikipedia article:

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

Some entries in the table of contents sound a bit embarrassing, like "Banana massacre" and "Aiding and abetting a terrorist organization". Description of a coup is to be found if someone reads the entry about Guatemela.

Various other top DDG results are about the same three things, dictionary entries and Pablo Neruda's poem.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=United+Fruit+Company&ia=web

It worked for Arthur Anderson -> Accenture although they also restructured the business. E.g. Accenture is only the consulting part of the business.

Honestly, I think it does work. Not perfectly, but somewhat, and that's enough to be worth doing for them.

People will continue to associate Facebook stuff and some of the parent-company shenanigans when they hit big news events, but it gives them another name for news releases and forcefully correcting news outlets that "Alphabet did X, and Alphabet is not Google".

I first thought of Comcast. People still call it "Comcast" instead of "Xfinity"

Or RoadRunner -> Time Warner -> Spectrum depending on your region and age

Wow. It does work. I had no idea Spectrum was Time Warner. I was just wondering the other day about what ended up happening with Time Warner.

I thought Xfinity was a “product” of comcast?

It's a "brand" of Comcast (whatever that means)

"Comcast Cable is the cable television division of Comcast Corporation, providing cable television, broadband internet, and landline telephone under the Xfinity brand." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast#Comcast_Cable_(Xfinity...

True, but Comcast Cable was still rebranded to it to avoid negative associations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfinity#Branding

May work to some extent, remember Blackwater?

Blackwater => Xe Services => Academi

An accidental case of that is Accenture. It split with Arthur Andersen (and got renamed) just a couple of years before the Enron Scandal broke.

I'm not sure how successful this rebrand will be when the words "Zuck" or "Zucked" in popular English literally mean "to arbitrarily remove or ban something for stupid or arbitrary reasons".

Google did it before it went mainstream.

to arbitrarily remove... for arbitrary reasons.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Popular English has taken a real hit in the last few years.

I'm not sure failing to proofread a throwaway comment on a social news site indicates anything about the state of popular English.

If we're being pedantic, I'll one up you: The removal being arbitrary does not require that the reason is arbitrary; see: selective enforcement. :p

Does it mean that? I’ve only seen Zuckerburg used as a verb to mean cheating your business partner out of the business

Anecdotally on Facebook itself I see the term "Zucked" thrown around a lot in groups for various topics, an example would be: "be careful with that post or you'll get the group Zucked". Maybe it's a regional or topic-specific thing but I see it quite a lot.

"Zuckerberged" means "to steal an idea from someone but change it just enough that you can claim it as yours". [0]

[0] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Zuckerberged

That's because Google remains Alphabet's most used product. I've theorized for years that Facebook massively benefits from all the negative coverage because Facebook itself isn't that popular anymore.

I would guess that if you were to split up FB into FB business pages, FB personal pages, Instagram, and Whatsapp, that FB personal pages would be the lowest-used product by a sizeable margin. If they rebrand along those lines, I'm guessing they could convince the public of that as well and lawmakers wouldn't be able to get their grubby regulating hands on it.

Certainly the "news feed" has to be the most used feature? From shoulder surfing some Fb users, it seems like users spend most of their time scrolling until something triggers a response. Then back to scrolling...

Actually, no.

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