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here's an interesting quora post by Garry Tan about designing the Palantir logo -- it's both supposed to be a crystal ball & look like a human reading a book. you can read the whole thing here: http://www.quora.com/Logos/What-does-Palantirs-logo-symboliz...

Looks like the top half of a person to me. Arms and head.

> sheepishly claim is inspired by The Lord of the Rings

And, for those who missed the reference, the Palantir is the "all-seeing" device used by the formerly good wizard who defects to the dark side partway through the series.

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

Ah. It does look like a crystal ball on a stand, once you know what you're looking at.

Which the founders surely know. Unless you believe they model themselves after the evil wizards (and barely anyone ever thinks of themselves as evil), it's more of an acknowledgement of the risk.

I've wondered whether the name is intentionally a kind of warning. I'm assuming that the company founders knew LoTR well enough to understand what connotations 'Palantir' brings, and while I expect not every customer would, enough might that it might give pause.