

Ask HN: Why do the names of so many products give no information on what it is? - bfish510

Dropbox makes me think of storage. iPhone is straight to the point as well as Evernote. Of every application you know with a large user base can you tell what the product does by it's name?<p>So why does it seem that so many companies give up such a valuable piece information into what their product does for a shorter domain name? To sound unique? If there is no connection between the name and the product how likely am I to remember the name when I try to talk about it?
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claudius
It might be worth pointing out that this is not a recent development. For
example, take the names of text editors:

\- Obvious: Word, Notes, Writer, ed, Notepad etc.

\- Less obvious: vi, vim, Emacs, nano/pico

Or car brands:

\- ‘Obvious’: General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen

\- Less Obvious: Mercedes, Ford, Audi

So this is definitely not a recent phenomenon and I hence doubt that you could
link it to the length of domain names.

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eterm
When it comes to retail, I have a self-rule about never buying from any
retailer whose name makes it obvious what they sell.

"amazon", "ebay", "Tesco" don't make it obvious.

"PC world", "Phones4u", "Lawyers4u", "buycheapstuffonline" make it obvious.

I think a unique name helps build a brand over a descriptive name which to me
often sounds cheap.

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bediger4000
I don't know for certain, but I get the sense that "intellectual property"
concerns play into naming pretty heavily these days. That is, folks don't want
to hassle with trademark dust-ups, so they use semi-random nonsense names to
avoid even appearing to infringe.

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meerita
Twitter? Facebook? those aren't so obvious to me.

