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For one moment there I thought Amazon had done a good thing!
by korijn 2mo ago
For one moment there I thought Amazon had done a good thing!
- kotaKat 2mo agoI thought for a moment this was some kind of reference to "no more destroyed Amazon Ground trailers on underpasses"...
- everyone 2mo agoI had the exact same reaction for a moment. But no, of course not.
- skeeter2020 2mo agosame - I was like "headline reads like PR but I guess it's good..." reminder to self: there was an Amazon before the bald bookseller
- s1mon 2mo agoHe also wasn't bald when he started selling books. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-25-the-magic-that-changed-everything/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-25-the-m...
- em3rgent0rdr 2mo agoPet peeve: companies that appropriate a dictionary term for their name, e.g. Apple, Google (& Alphabet), Amazon, Oracle. It's really not too hard to create a new name for your company, e.g. Microsoft, Facebook and Nvidia.
- throwaway2037 2mo agoWildberries
- toast0 2mo agoFacebook isn't a new name either. Some schools would publish and distribute a book of student photos with names at the beginning of the school year, to help recognize peers; these were called a facebook. Yearbooks are similar, but published at the end of the year and also have a lot of content about what happened that year and organizations and sports.
- em3rgent0rdr 2mo agodidn't know that... In that case I should count "Facebook" as another violater.
- fhdkweig 2mo agoA face book is a generic term for a school directory with photographs. That's why Zuckerberg called it The Facebook to differentiate it from all the other face books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book
- loloquwowndueo 2mo agoMicrosoft doesn’t belong in this list after they trademarked Windows, Word, Works (remember, Microsoft Works is an oxymoron) and others.
- inigyou 2mo agoMicrosoft Works was such a weird product because it was just half-assed Microsoft Office, but Microsoft Office already existed.
- loloquwowndueo 2mo agoNo. Works predated Office by 3 years at least. The first versions of Works ran under ms-dos.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoSeveral other vendors had office "works" suites too. ClarisWorks, AppleWorks, seems like there were some others for the variety of platforms in the 80s/90s but I can't recall them offhand.
- loloquwowndueo 2mo agoLotus symphony.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway2037 2mo agoAs I understand, Microsoft Works was primary aimed at retail buyers, but Microsoft Office was aimed at enterprises users. MW was probably half the cost of MO. It is market segmentation, as I see it.
- wat10000 2mo agoI don’t think Google should be on that list. The word is “googol.”
- jader201 2mo agoNot to mention, even “googol” is a word almost no one uses (unlike “apple” and “Amazon”).
- GaryBluto 2mo agoIf you count Google as an appropriation of Googol, surely Nvidia appropriates Invidia?
- nilamo 2mo agoThose are different though? At no point in that sentence was I confused about which word meant what. Unlike Amazonian datacenters deep in the Amazon's Amazon.
- em3rgent0rdr 2mo agoNah. "Google" is pronounced the same as the English word "Googol", so I do consider it appropriating. Meanwhile, Invidia is a latin word, which as a dead language, and it is pronounced differently from "Nvidia", so I don't consider that the same as appropriating a living language word.
- ButlerianJihad 2mo ago"invidia" is an Italian word, so it does survive in living languages. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/invidia https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/invidia "Nvidia" as "officially" pronounced in English is not significantly different from some of those pronunciations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia And the founders seemed to be well aware of the existing usage when they chose the name.
- hodgesrm 2mo ago> Pet peeve: companies that appropriate a dictionary term for their name, e.g. Apple, Google (& Alphabet), Amazon, Oracle. Hard disagree. Consider "Oracle," a truly inspired name for a database company. It's an admirable choice. Here's the computer science definition. > In complexity theory and computability theory, an oracle machine is an abstract machine that can query a black box called an oracle, which is able to give an answer to any instance of a certain problem in a single operation. There's also the wealth of linkages with classical oracles, e.g., Delphi, Cumae (technically a Sibyl), Dodona, etc. [1] Taken together, it's hard to think of a better name. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_machine [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle
- manquer 2mo agoRelated - companies named after animals or use animal names as part of their name /logo /mascot should at least contribute a share of their profits to its conservation
- ssl-3 2mo agonVidia comes from the Latin word invidia, which means things like envy, or jealousy. Microsoft (originally Micro-Soft) is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software. Facebook, as others have mentioned, is a compound word that was borrowed from what literal books of faces [and names] were called. When I think of non-dictionary names, I think of things like Mosptnspg.
- em3rgent0rdr 2mo agoportmanteaus are great, actually. Didn't know that about facebook. Non-dictionary names don't need to be as wierd as Mosptnspg. Could simply be Frodel.
- Falimonda 2mo agoSelling you dirt-cheap goods with next-day delivery isn't enough for you?