Completely unrelated to the story, but why in the world does ABC News use 'abcnews.go.com' instead of just 'abcnews.com' (which redirects)? And could 'go.com' look any more like a domain squatting page?
Disney owns ABC and ESPN. I vaguely remember plugs on TV in the mid-90s that mentioned go.com when referring to ABC or ESPN. I think this was the time period when most people were used to hearing AOL keywords instead of actual URLs and domain names when websites were advertised.
ABC paid a lot of money for Go.com back in the bubble years, but yeah, it is pretty weird that that property has persisted for so long. They must have some reason to believe that it is beneficial.
Two interesting tidbits in 3 pages on topic of the logo:
"the company felt it no longer needed to reinforce its name at every turn"
and
"The new wordless logo also is better suited to the company's expansion beyond coffee into a wider array of business lines and into more international markets."
The second point makes good sense to me, the first not as much.
As in removing "Coffee" from the logo is a good idea.
But eliminating "Starbucks" entirely going to cost them brand association, hands down, unecessarily.