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Comment by somewhereoutth | Hacker News Reader

Interesting trend from specialized names with large amount of semantic content, towards more generalized names with very little semantic content: Google->Alphabet, Facebook->Meta, Square->Block (ok a little tenuous). What's next? Apple->Fruit? Windows->Opening?

I guess it is so the owners can imagine the company to be whatever they want it to be, though typically they end up being nothing at all.

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Also a trend in making things increasingly less googleable.

iTunes->Music. Searching for issues with the application formerly known as iTunes is borderline impossible now.

Whoever approved that must’ve gotten an MBA from a top-ranked school, because any decent person would immediately recognize it as a bad idea.

Don’t ever try to search for Apple TV. Are you talking about the physical streaming device? The ‘TV’ app (iOS version? iPadOS version? tvOS version? macOS version? Or maybe the version on your LG TV?) Or maybe you’re even talking about the AppleTV+ streaming service.

Same searching issues with ‘Mail’, ‘Notes’, ‘Reminders’, ‘Calendar’, ‘Numbers’, etc. Impossible to troubleshoot.

I’m as much of an Apple fanboy as the next guy, but I totally agree that this naming is ridiculous.

At least Safari isn’t ‘Web’ (yet).

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

Already been done.

The Word text processor was already ungoogleable before there even was Google. This lexicographic landgrab not exactly a new phenomenon.

Within platforms like Apple OS it's a very powerful tool: if you give your app for doing something a brand it effectively admits that there could be other apps, but if you don't that is easy to forget.

Amazon -> Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

Translation:

"In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

As companies trend toward being conglomerates of unrelated businesses, it makes sense for them to rebrand this way.

Google makes (a little) sense for just search, but it makes no sense as a self-driving taxi service.

"Google" is a meaningless pair of semi-pronouncable nonsense syllables, inspired by the made up big number "googol" (which was named by a 9-year-old child whose uncle wrote a pop math book). It has no problem standing for self-driving taxis or whatever else.

If you want your own similar company name, visit an elementary school and ask the 3rd grade students for advice. You can make "bleeblax" or "squibjub" or "tibflee" or "shubzoo" into the next unicorn company.

The weak connection is that the googolplex represents a huge amount of data, like Google’s searched index. Your other syllables don’t have that connection. It doesn’t matter how a huge number got its accepted name.

The googol connection actually would still work for Waymo since AI driving also requires huge quantities of data.

The new names all sound minimalist and trendy.

In japan the owners just put their family name there. I guess some of these tech owners dont want their family ethics being confused with what their business does

Jack should not have used Block, it should be either called "@jack" or the address of his bitcoin wallet

That makes me think most nouns should be protected in society for companies 'claiming' them.... They are basically putting a flag on the whatever word they rename to, and forcing the entire user base of the English language to reframe what that word means....

If you're company is "Apple", then you are rewriting the meaning of the actual physical apple object. An example alternative that protects the Nouns, would be to have to add a number on the end. Apple-1 could sell laptops, Apple-5 could sell apple peelers, Apple-2123 could make wool sweatshirts

Windows is already owned my a bigger company (Microsoft) and Apple is already a company that sells products (Mac, iPhone, allegedly some software)

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