Name Critic rates: Google+

Google+
Technical
Presentation
Our Rating
2
2
From the day they were born, Google has always been a company that has tried to change the world. And sometimes they have succeeded. In fact spectacularly so with their core search engine Google itself. In fact that word is now in the dictionary – as a verb. So for an encore, they naturally wanted to preserve their brand equity and do what programmers do everywhere, call the follow on version the Plus version.It could have been just as easily the Pro or Platinum version. Right? Wrong!

This is a completely different product. May even be used by people who prefer one of the other excellent search engines out there. Why it doesn’t have a real name beats me. They have a great portfolio of good product names already – like Chrome or Picasso or YouTube or Dash or Orkut or Gmail or simply Maps. If you wanted to go to MySpace or Facebook you would go to myspace.com or facebook.com.

If you go to googleplus.com (after figuring out the internet domains do not support symbols other than a hyphen) it goes nowhere! If you go to Gplus.com you get a very interesting discussion board that is easy to use and already full or rich content, unlike plus.google.comwhich exhorts you at every turn to add something or circle somebody. Maybe if they would leave me in peace I could figure it out…but it sure isn’t as friendly a name or site as Facebook.We all love, eat and breathe Google. Pity this new attempt at social networking just has an appendage moniker and not a name. So far even their trademark filing has not been converted to actual usage status.

Maybe this is a big experiment after all..and when they figure out how to monetize it they will take the time to give it a real friendly name. Don’t they get that part of big success of Facebook is that even grandmas and kindergartners can find it on the internet.. and use it without being a minimalist geek from Silicon Valley.

Oh well, maybe all those Brazilian Orkut users will move over in due course and make the site dance to the samba.

Once again, the company that had such magic going with its logo and all the colorful interpretations, couldn’t even find anything to do with a + sign .. even a 2nd grader could have done this one, so that is why it scores only 2 points.

 

PS The name critic apologizes for also becoming a bit of product critic here too. Sorry. Couldn’t hold back. Was even bolstered by hearing from extremely prolific online social users in 20’s age group that Google+ is all history already. Latest local joke is to call it Google +/-

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See his industry naming commentary (where he takes a critical look at names) via the blog on this site