Google Can’t Name Things
Google announced YouTube Red yesterday. Google, blissfully unaware of what’s going on in incognito mode, apparently thought it was a good name for the service. This isn’t the first time Google has made an outrageous choice in naming things.
As a brand, Google is pretty good. The name is unique, it has become synonymous with search, and the company has even managed to convey a distinct identity of whim, curiosity, and experimentation. This is why it’s rather frustrating that every time Google announces a new product name, it’s either an ordinary English word with “Google” on the front, or it’s a weird name that doesn’t make a damn sense.
Google Now is a terrible name for a great product
Google is the only company that hasn’t tried to impersonate its voice assistant. And that suits me. Siri, Cortana, and Alexa are good, but I won’t be upset if my phone doesn’t get cocky when I ask it to divide zero by zero . But I’m almost sorry that Google didn’t really give Google Now status so it wouldn’t be so silly to talk about it.
For starters, Google still hasn’t really clarified what Google is now . Initially, it seemed like “Google Now” refers to a page of cards that try to guess what information you want to receive at any given moment. However, it now appears that a collection of Google Voice Commands is included in “Google Now”. Or is it part of something called “Ok Google,” as it appears on this help page ? Google used to have a separate product called Voice Actions, but it’s now the name of Google’s platform for third-party developers who can add voice commands to Google. Maybe Google Voice Commands don’t have a name. But if so, then the entire Google Personal Assistant product has no name at all. Which would be really stupid since voice commands are so much more useful than Google Now maps.
Google made things worse with the introduction of Now On Tap. Ignoring the fact that “Now On Tap” is an extremely silly phrase , Now On Tap is also misleading. As I mentioned in my practical experience, Now On Tap is more like Google On Tap . You can search for things, but nothing more. This feature bears little resemblance to Google Now. Unless you turn on the Ok Google voice commands that Now On Tap has. The plot thickens.
Even so, Google Now is really hard to talk about. Have you ever read the headline about Google Now? “Google Now can create reminders with a voice command.” Does this mean that the Google search engine can do this? Or is it strictly for the Google Now mobile app? Regardless of whether I’m reading a headline like this or writing it, I would prefer to use some kind of anthropomorphic character rather than an ambiguous, awkwardly placed word.
Google Play sounds fine because we’re used to it
Even after Google announced the Play Store, it seems like the company hasn’t decided what the name should mean. From a consumer perspective, “Google Play” means “a store where I can buy things.” This includes apps, movies, TV shows, books, music, and games. Good! Simple enough. However, there is also something called Google Play services that often show up in your app list or Android battery stats. Google Play Services is a collection of APIs and services that developers can use to add new functionality to their applications. Most consumers have no idea what the hell this latest offering actually means, let alone why it carries the same branding as Google’s content store.
This confusion has tangible consequences. The list of Google Play services in the Play Store (ugh, I already hate this offer) is filled with thousands of negative reviews because consumers just don’t know what the hell it is. They assume that only the Google store is draining their battery or taking up all of that space on their phone.
As if that weren’t enough, Google Play isn’t the only Google store. Not long ago, Google used the Play Store to sell various Google hardware. Now the company has a separate Google Store for this. At the very least, they are sanely separated – the Google Store is for tangible items, the Play Store is for intangible items – but as we’ll see later, this is another example of Google having only two .
Google Drive still hasn’t overcome its identity crisis
Let’s play a hypothetical game: What if Microsoft’s suite of office applications, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, were called OneDrive? Will it be a clear and clever name? Or would that be silly and confusing? Because that’s exactly what Google has done with Google Drive.
When Google first introduced Google Drive, it was nothing more than an unsightly competitor to Dropbox . Then they started adding Google Docs functionality to Drive. Rather than having separate apps for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides (as we do now), Drive was one big file editor that also sync … other files, I think.
We’re in a better position today, at least in terms of understanding what the hell Drive is. On most platforms, we have separate stand-alone applications for Documents, Presentations and Sheets. “Drive” usually refers to “some amount of space on Google’s servers for storing and syncing files.” Of course, Google doesn’t always make it clear what counts towards your storage limit , but it doesn’t matter. This is a separate topic.
Even though Google Drive is relatively more distinct than it has been in the past, it still doesn’t realize it’s not a complete set of products. The Google Drive landing page continues to be positioned as a suite of office tools rather than a dumping ground for files. A simple name change would have solved this problem. Name the package Google Office (or Google Cubicle, or Google Work, or Google Boring Crap), call the Google Drive storage service, and give each office application its own name under the Office banner. You will never confuse anyone. Unfortunately, this is far too reasonable for Google.
New Google Hangouts buried old Google Hangouts in a product of the same name
Does anyone else remember when Google Hangouts was the coolest thing on the planet? This was when “Google Hangouts” was a 10-person simultaneous video chat service that was and still is amazing. It was one of the coolest things Google has ever done, although sadly it was buried on Google+.
That was until Google updated Google Talk (which for some reason was sometimes also referred to as “Chat”). This overhaul, which was part of Google’s plan to unify your messaging, resulted in Google ditching the Talk and Chat monikers and instead calling its messaging app Hangouts. The old Hangouts video chat product has been migrated to the new Hangouts as nothing more than a feature.
This may sound like a minor nitpick, but it’s a damn shame because Hangouts video chat is supposed to be a banner feature here, but Google continues to hide it in something else. Skype is widely known as a video chat application. As if other products don’t exist at all. Ask any random stranger on the street if they want to chat with you on Skype and they will understand what you are talking about. They’ll think you’re fucking disgusting, but they’ll know what Skype is.
Hangouts video chat is arguably better than Skype in many ways. It has tons of powerful apps that you can share with people over the phone. You can work on drawings together or read bedtime stories to the children . Hell, I can run a whole Dungeons & Dragons campaign in Hangouts. Or at least it could, if someone really remembers Hangouts as something other than that pesky instant messaging client on your Gmail side.
Don’t even make me start on Google+
Turning your entire suite of products into one huge social network is something that probably deserves more than branding worthy of one character.
Google keeps burning names by reloading products
I recently bought the Nexus Player because it was commercially available and I wanted to try it out. This is my second time buying a set-top box developed by Google. The first was the Logitech Revue. It launched Google TV . Nexus Player works under the control of All Android the TV . Oh, and I also have a Chromecast. He uses Google Cast . There are too many brands and product names in this one paragraph that describe multiple versions of the same service.
Google does this with all kinds of products. Google briefly had two completely different Google Wallet apps in the Play Store last month because one was about to be renamed Android Pay. I still don’t quite understand what is the difference between the two. I know that Android Pay is used to pay for things from your phone, and Google Wallet is a kind of PayPal clone, but I’m not sure why they became two different things.
Oh, and lest we forget, we now have Google Play Music, YouTube Music, and YouTube Red all linked together. These are good services, but Google has too many music-related products and it’s hard to keep up with which one does what.
To make things even more confusing, if you subscribe to Full Access to Google Play Music (ugh), you automatically subscribe to YouTube Music Key (now) or YouTube Red (when it comes out next week). If they are the same service, it would make sense to treat them as the same service. People are already unhappy with YouTube charging $ 10 a month to remove ads without realizing that it also comes with a service like Spotify. Google’s naming conventions encourage this confusion.
YouTube Red sounds like a porn site
All this brings us to the present day. More often than not, Google’s big naming sin is too general. The Google maps application is called Maps. The book app is called Books. Super smart. It’s annoying, especially when it comes to looking up product information (for example, “Kindle vs. Books” doesn’t return information about the Google eBook app), but it’s not the worst naming sin Google has ever committed. The worst of these is Google’s latest venture: YouTube Red.
This is the only time Google has finally gotten the concept almost right. Rather than calling it something politely generic, like an ad-free YouTube service, they tried to respond to the real brand . Sure, it’s another normal English word, but at least “YouTube Red” sounds completely different. The service itself. This phrase can become its own noun. Hulu was a meaningless word until we all got used to it being a streaming video site. Google could put any word in there and turn it into a brand .
Except that RedTube is already the name of a very famous porn site. One of the biggest. Honestly Google, what the hell were you thinking? Forget about consumer confusion. Who in your marketing department has allowed the public to associate the words “pipe” and “red” with an official Google product? Was that an internal codename? A joke that slipped past the review board? Or do you just give a shit? Maybe Google is big enough that in a couple of years no one would care that their name is stupid, as we did with Google Play.
To be honest, none of these things are actually the biggest problem in the world. Google has been shit about naming and branding things for years, and we all survived just fine. However, in general it is really difficult for users to understand what they are using or how to get more information about a product. All I’m asking is to get a little more creative in naming things, Google. You have a vibrant whimsical logo, an endless series of clever doodles, and a campus that looks like Willy Wonka designed it. I’m sure you can think of better names for things than Google Now and YouTube Red.