Hacker News Reader

Comment by sharan | Hacker News Reader

You arrived at this conclusion as a result of Android's naming convention which uses food names instead of version numbers?

View on HN

No, I arrived at that conclusion because KitKat and Google have both publicly announced the tie-up, and Google doesn't seem to understand, or more likely doesn't care, what it means to actively promote a company like Nestle. There are plently of other "K" foods they could choose if they wanted to.

To be fair, it's not just this incident that helped me reach the conclusion, its been festering at the back of my mind for a while.

I'm not sure I see this as anything more as a co-branding strategy.

But it's a co-branding strategy with a company that is widely condemned as having some horrible (and illegal) practices.

It's trivially easy to find these. I cannot believe that anyone at the largest search engine company in history failed to find or read criticism of Nestle before announcing the co branding.

The only conclusion to draw is that Google knew about, and did not care about, the criticism of Nestle.

Why not go the easy route and find a less obviously evil company?

Another possible conclusion is that they selected a few possibilities, including other K-desserts (Kakao? no, too Cocoa; Kremlin Cake? too sovietic; Kaki jam? Weird, too Chinese; etc) and decided the less bad one was Kitkat.

I'd say the problem is to be too systematic. Same with Ubuntu Zoomy Zoo and Apple iSeries. Would a writer submit himself to such a gimmick for his book's names?

However, my main grip again Kitkat would be that it is the same as all other "chocolate" bar: it is industrial junk-food, making us all obese, and it do not contain chocolate.

> Would a writer submit himself to such a gimmick for his book's names?

You'd be surprised! Some of these are weaker than others.

Stephanie Plum (By Janet Evanovich) start "One for the money", "two for the dough", "three to get deadly", "four to score", etc etc. (https://duckduckgo.com/c/Stephanie_Plum_books)(This is a terrible website)(http://stephanieplum.com/)

Hannah Swenson, 'murder she baked', has food in each title (and a recipe in each book) (admittedly, the titles aren't in any order) (http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_14?url=search-ali...)

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Janet-Evanovich/e/B000APXTY4/ref=sr_...)

Women's Murder club. Each title starts with an incremented digit. "1St to die", "2nd chance", "3rd degree", etc. (http://www.jamespatterson.com/books_wmc.php#.Uigpk9KRC0I)

Alex Cross, (By James Patterson) starting to get Children's nursery rhymes in the titles. (http://www.jamespatterson.com/books_alex_cross.php#.UigpyNKR...)

Cal Murphy (by Jack Patterson) uses Cross in the title - "Cross Hairs", "Cross the Line", "Triple Cross". (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Patterson/e/B0098F2E48/ref=ntt_...) (This last one feels odd - the author name is close to James Paterson, and the series titling uses a word ('cross') that happens to be the name of the James Paterson protagonist.

If you avoided every company that has done morally reprehensible things, then you would probably be naked right now and have no way to get to work.

You would be surprised at what you can achieve with a little effort and using mainly smaller companies with an ethical bent (certainly ethical clothing and bicycles are available).

Nevertheless, I agree it is hard, and I'll likely be using some of Googles services for a while yet. My main point is how my view of them has changed, and that will make me seek out alternatives when possible.

Google could not have adopted marketing like this without Nestlé's approval. Nestlé are truly vile and "do no evil™" are in some form of partnership with them, at the very least it is cross-promotion.

Jelly Bean was sponsored?

Calling the version "KitKat" was basically product-placement.

Who is sponsoring who?

Nestle paid for product placement of 'kitkat'.

Nestle have given press releases describing their 'collaboration', and even set up this website. Its inconceivable that Google did not demand payment; Google could have called it something generic like all their previous versions.

Google of course probably approached Nestle. They created a new revenue generating angle on creating an OS.

Debian ought to go get money from other brands through similar version naming.

Seriously, why isn't the next Ubuntu called "Head&Shoulders"?

There was an article on The Verge yesterday about the Google/Nestlé thing. They said no money changed hands.

Right. Why does Google need to paid for this? Any dollar figure would be insignificant, not scaleable and not part of their core business. Selling naming rights to their SDKs?! Are these baseball stadiums?

> Nestle paid for product placement of 'kitkat'.

I haven't seen that anywhere. All reports thus far have said that neither side is paying for this.

Might become a thing. Of course, Android is more famous than Ubuntu (to the masses)

They never used branded or trademarked food names. It's cute and attention getting though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com