7 ms·

While I don't like the branding move at all, I think the concern that people will start calling them moz-colon-forward-slash-forwadslash-a is a little ridiculou

• adamgravitis 10y ago
  To be fair, I do insist on calling Deloitte "Deloitte Dot".
  • semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    Also "the Kia Cee-apostrophe-dee" and "the VW Up-exclamation-mark". Not to mention "the Ferrari the Ferrari (sic)".
    • CWuestefeld 10y ago
      To be fair, those were specific examples of trying to be silly.
• wott 10y ago
  > No, because people aren't complete idiots. Sweet summer child. http://www.gentside.com/le-bon-coin/le-bon-coin-un-ordinateur-susv-marque-concurrente-de-asus-vous-dirait_pic124466.html http://www.gentside.com/le-bon-coin/le-bon-coin-un-ordinateu... http://i.imgur.com/4nMqG8C.png http://i.imgur.com/4nMqG8C.png http://www.jofogas.hu/veszprem/Sony_mio_laptop_elado_60403468.htm http://www.jofogas.hu/veszprem/Sony_mio_laptop_elado_6040346... http://archiwum.allegro.pl/oferta/sony-mio-pcg-6e1m-laptop-okazja-i6494889749.html http://archiwum.allegro.pl/oferta/sony-mio-pcg-6e1m-laptop-o... https://www.olx.in/item/sony-wio-laptop-ID19koWZ.html https://www.olx.in/item/sony-wio-laptop-ID19koWZ.html
  • bisby 10y ago
    MOST people aren't complete idiots. Clarifying your logo isn't going to make the idiots suddenly smart.
  • dustinmr 10y ago
    Change languages and you're in a whole other world. Have an Argentine (for example) pronounce Yosemite National Park for you. Or for that matter, ask an English speaker to pronounce Habanero (there's no ñ) or someone from the East Coast to say Oregon or Puyallup. While those are words and names, examples abound in marketing. But to continue my example, Argentines already pronounce Mozilla differently than an English speaker, or other Spanish speakers for that matter! So this should be nothing new.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • aristus 10y ago
      "Moh-see-jah"
    • analogmemory 10y ago
      I always got a kick how google/apple maps used to pronounce Sepulveda Blvd in Los Angeles. (Or almost any street name with a Spanish name)
      • hobarrera 10y ago
        Using stuff like Here Maps, Apple Maps (and probably Google Maps too) when driving around Argentina is a real laugh.
    • aaronbrethorst 10y ago
      Puy = The same sound as the word "pew", like a church pew. Allup = Al + Up. Like "Gallop" without the g. Sequim is still my favorite Washington place :) http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/pronounce-washington-names/ http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/pronounce-washington-nam...
• cookiecaper 10y ago
  The difference is that Verizon-Checkmark is clearly an invalid interpretation - the checkmark is obviously decorative. Mozilla's new logo was chosen specifically due to the double meaning, the similarity between the symbols :// and the glyphs "ill". The ambiguity is what makes it "clever", and it's kind of an in-joke that most non-tech people, who've never heard of "Mozilla" as such, won't immediately register. They'll read the characters literally and say "moz://a? Is that a new computer thing?" I don't think that's an idiotic response at all. This is a bad generic logo merely because it doesn't clearly communicate their company's identity in a unique and obvious way, which is the sole function of a logo in the first place. I could see this rendering appearing at some hacker events or on t-shirts, but IMO it makes no sense to use it as a generic logo. I don't even want to think about the nightmare of accidentally rendering the string "moz://a" in a typeface that the lawyers consider too similar to that used in the logo.
• Jordrok 10y ago
  Sure, people will almost definitely not call them "moz-colon-forward-slash-forwadslash-a", but I could easily see a lot of people shortening the whole thing to just Moz. The :// in a url acts as a separator, so the important bits are whatever come before and after it. All there is after it is an "a" which isn't very informative, so my eyes are drawn to "moz" instead. Which isn't ideal because a company named Moz already exists and has no connection to Mozilla whatsoever. Maybe less technical people who aren't used to seeing full urls won't have the same reaction, but in that case you've still got a problem because they probably won't already know who Mozilla is and it's kind of a leap to go from Moz://a to Mozilla without already knowing the name.
  • adam12 10y ago
    It took me until your post to see that : = i and // = ll. I've known the Mozilla name for years. I guess I'm just too accustomed to seeing http:// http://. edit: Maybe other people see haiti's pill.
    • jaclaz 10y ago
      I am definitely old school, but if this (IMHO senseless) idea of reading "://" as "ill" would go on, a few sites might be read "the wrong way", as an example ;) silly combinator: https://ycombinator.com https://ycombinator.com and silly ahoo.com: https://yahoo.com https://yahoo.com No, wait, the latter one doesn't sound too bad...
• whyileft 10y ago
  Who cares... Mozilla gets more and more irrelevant by the day. Since its clear the leadership is completely ineffective but someone manages to not be replaced, its pretty obvious Mozilla will continue its downward path. In a real corporation this entire group would be replaced based on current and recent past performance. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/ Such a shame. EDIT: Not surprised to see people trying to censor my comment as opposed to addressing the dismal leadership that somehow avoids all accountability.
  • theparanoid 10y ago
    They need a new organization built from the ashes of the old.
• devopsproject 10y ago
  it is better than "Mozzarella" or "Fox Fire" which I have heard numerous times
  • toxican 10y ago
    My mother still calls it Fox Fire and Newegg, "Egghead", although I think it's mostly to annoy me. It doesn't though, but I let her think it does because it's funny.
    • daxelrod 10y ago
      I've always interpreted Newegg's name as a reference to defunct egghead.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egghead_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egghead_Software .
    • rdiddly 10y ago
      Yes but what is ne and what is a wegg?
• andrei_says_ 10y ago
  Seems like you conflate idiocy with pre-existing exposure to a brand's proper spelling. While I see the value of this sentiment, the brands you mentioned have branding efforts that so far overspend mozilla's that the comparison is barely relevant. Also, typing www.mo://a.org in a browser presents a serious problem.
  • xg15 10y ago
    Full stops are allowed in schemes, so technically "www.moz" is a valid scheme name...
• andrei_says_ 10y ago
  Seems like you conflate idiocy with pre-existing exposure to a brand's proper spelling. While I see the value of this sentiment, the brands you mentioned have branding efforts that so far overspend mozilla's that the comparison is barely relevant. Also, typing www.mo://a.org in a browser presents a serious problem.
• JadeNB 10y ago
  > Is Sony's line of laptops Analog Wave One Zero? Is Verizon Verizoncheckmark? Is Johnson & Johnson Johnson ampersand Johnson? Is Comcast CComcast? I think that a problem with all these examples is that, with the exception of "Johnson & Johnson" (where people do read '&' as it is commonly read, as 'and' rather than the name of the symbol), the decoration isn't, in fact, part of the name, so that people who ignore it correctly understand the name; whereas the decoration in moz://a is part of the name, and is not read as it would be in other contexts ('colon slash slash', back when people read full URLs aloud, slowly and awkwardly—remember those days?).
• chm 10y ago
  I read "mozza", then I "got" the web reference, and immediately disliked it. I don't really understand how moz://a is better than Mozilla, but I don't categorically oppose it either. New branding is fine but the choice here is a bit more debatable than the examples you point out, where each of the brand names are spelled 100% with the alphabet. In OP, 3 characters in 7 are not letters. Edit: Maybe Mozilla could have suggested an addition to UTF-8 and used that new stylized character "://"?
• newscracker 10y ago
  > I think the concern that people will start calling them moz-colon-forward-slash-forwadslash-a is a little ridiculous Honestly, I'd be happier if someone called it "moz-colon-forward-slash-forwardslash-a" instead of calling it "moz-colon-backslash-backslash-a". I've seen so many people mix up slash (forward slash) and backslash!
  • apricot 10y ago
    I once had a student describe the "/" character by saying "You know, the backwards backslash".
• com2kid 10y ago
  I was unaware that it spelled out Mozilla until a news article explained it for me. Reading : as "i" is incredibly unnatural to me, and I still don't read it as Mozilla. I see it and parse it as "the company in charge of Firefox." If asked to pronounce it, without news articles telling me to say "Mozilla", I'd be 100% uncertain of what to say.
• subjectsigma 10y ago
  Oftentimes when reading something with a lot of symbols in it, I just remove the symbols and pronounce it as if the name were a sentence. Quick example: writing emacs lisp, I see 'global-set-key' and think "Global set key", as if someone were reading it out. Thus the new name isn't moz-colon-forward-slash-forwadslash-a, which would be ridiculous, but 'Mozza', which is much more plausible but equally detrimental, eg the logo is still being misinterpreted. Reading that article from Brand New someone posted further down, I found myself wondering briefly what "Dressed to K" meant... Maybe I just have "a complete lack of imagination or willingness to adapt" [0], but somehow I think it's not entirely my fault. 0: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_for_mozilla_by_johnson_banks.php http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo...
  • mrkgnao 10y ago
    In case it helps now: K:// is supposed to be "kill".