9 ms·

Google has caught MMD (Microsoft Marketing Disease), in which companies endlessly rebrand and rename products that are successful, but not market-leading, in an

Google has caught MMD (Microsoft Marketing Disease), in which companies endlessly rebrand and rename products that are successful, but not market-leading, in an effort to become the market leader, but end up fragmenting their own brands further by alienating existing loyal users and confusing late-adopters and casual observers who don't follow the branding news. This marketing-driven disease spreads to other parts of the business, as engineers see a rebranding as a legitimate time to break backwards-compatibility, but they aren't given the lead-time or budget for a full rework, so the new product is similar enough to the old product that it's obviously just a rehash, but different enough so that nothing that worked with the old thing will easily work with the new thing. MMD keeps managers, marketers, product teams, and engineering leads busy, and makes executives believe progress is being made since all the metrics look good: there are tech blog articles, Twitter mentions, Hacker News threads, maybe a mainstream media hit or two; all the teams have finite task lists that are getting done; and there's an initial jump in brand awareness and new user engagement. The actual damage to the brand doesn't happen until long enough down the road that the brilliant minds who came up with the idea have collected their bonus checks, awards, and promotions, and moved onto better things. And now the executives start talking up the need for a new marketing strategy... lather, rinse, repeat.

mikestew 9y ago
Google has caught MMD (Microsoft Marketing Disease) Microsoft was exactly my first thought when I read this. "Are they pulling a SkyDrive here, and it's just rebranded Google Wallet?" And I use SkyDrive as an example because I lost count of how many times Microsoft renamed their online storage, to the point that I just gave up and used Dropbox. It must work, or companies wouldn't do it. But it just alienates me. Is this the new boss, same as the old boss? Or a new product with new things I should take a look at? Does it work better than when I tried to use Google Wallet when I had Android? Aww, fuck it, I'll just keep using Apple Pay.
- laken 9y ago
  Not to try to invalidate your point (because Microsoft is definitely guilty of this practice), but SkyDrive was rebranded for legal reasons*, instead of marketing reasons. https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/28/uks-bskyb-wins-judgement-against-microsoft-over-use-of-skydrive-name-in-europe/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/28/uks-bskyb-wins-judgement-a...
  - mikestew 9y ago
    Yeesh, out of all the choices available, I had to pick the worst example, eh? Feel free to substitute "Live Mesh" or "FolderShare". :-)
    - mynameisvlad 9y ago
      I would say the difference with those examples and Pay with Google (as well as Google's other rebrands) is that Live Mesh and FolderShare really weren't being used prior to rolling them into Live Drive/SkyDrive/OneDrive (whenever those got integrated, it's been years). The rebrand was intentional to try and get them to be used more by attaching them to a more successful brand, which happened to be the one for our online storage. Google likes taking successful products and then rebranding them out of the blue for no real reason other than to seem "integrated". Things like splitting off messaging from Hangouts, which was already an amalgamation of features and other products like Google Talk and the old messaging app. Or like Google Pay, which is an amalgamation of a bunch of other successful products like Android Pay (which was itself an amalgamation of other products like Google Wallet and Google Checkout along with certain acquisitions). With Google, it just seems like they constantly have FOMO of being on the "hot new brand".
    - booleandilemma 9y ago
      Lync / Skype for Business?
      - discordance 9y ago
        Lync -> Skype for Biz -> Teams
- proee 9y ago
  And don't forget Microsoft search. Before "Bing" it was called "Live" and I think there were a few more names before that as well. I'm surprised the name Bing is still around and not replaced with something else.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    Before all that was MSN.com search. Now it redirects to Bing.
- bsimpson 9y ago
  You can pick examples at most big companies. iTools => mobileMe => iCloud.
djsumdog 9y ago
> that are successful, but not market-leading I was thinking, isn't this just Google's standard competition with Apple Pay and PayPal/Vinmo?
jacksmith21006 9y ago
Really depends on the product. They had several iterations of photos before they landed on Google photos which is excellent and industry leading but took a while.
- chasil 9y ago
  Any activity involving my finances will require current security patches. Because these are unavailable for >95% of Android phones, I have not and will not use these services. I'm (currently) on LineageOS with the December security update - Android Pay doesn't work there, not that I ever wanted it anyway.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    Android Pay is worthwhile even if you never use it for payment purposes. It also holds discount/membership cards. For example, my IKEA, Jet Blue, CVS, and Walgreens cards are in there. I don't know if you use those types of things, but they don't seem to warrant the type of security a credit card would.
- dandv 9y ago
  I don't know how excellent Google Photos is. https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/photos/9so7okdj1ZA/2kjAWzf4AgAJ https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/photos/9so7okdj1ZA/2k... When it comes to organization beyond shoving photos at it and hoping for the AI's best, Photos is deeply disappointing. Competitors like Fotki has nested albums 10 years ago. Photos doesn't show your device folders on the web, and can't move files locally without crashing or duplicating them.
testplzignore 9y ago
This got me thinking that I don't really know what products Microsoft even sells anymore. I know they have Windows and Office of course, but do they even still sell Windows, or is it all ad-driven revenue now? And of course they have bing.com, which is ad-driven. And Xbox, though that itself has gone through a similiar series of confusing names (Xbox 360 is Xbox 2 and Xbox One is Xbox 3?!). I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live, which has a list of various online products that have been renamed or killed off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Shopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Shopping is the most ridiculous one, which has gone through every possible name except for "MSDOS Shopping". I had no idea it even existed.
- __david__ 9y ago
  > do they even still sell Windows, or is it all ad-driven revenue now? Yes. I built a gaming PC last year and had to buy Windows 10 since I wasn't upgrading any existing computer. It's not cheap either—it was one of the high cost components of the system.
  - Tempest1981 9y ago
    And Win10 now has (what many consider) ads: https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-windows-10-ads-taskbar-file-explorer https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-window...
  - titanix2 9y ago
    You could have used a non activated version with a free image provided by MS as the only downside now is a few customization options disabled. It shows as far as MS is willing to go to put Win 10 in people throat.
- addicted 9y ago
  They are still making a lot of money selling Windows. Every OEM has to buy a copy of Windows. The only difference is that now they don't charge for upgrades. Which is extremely smart because the cost of supporting people on decade old OSes probably significantly exceeds the revenues earned from consumers who are buying Windows upgrades to their existing PCs. Oh, and enterprise licenses are the same, if I am not mistaken. Frankly, MS not making updates free earlier was them shooting themselves in their foot.
qznc 9y ago
My best guess is that we see internal politics leak out. Product names are a "leaky abstraction" over organization structure. In the case of Google: Chief Googler: "We need a payments product: Google Wallet" time passes Android Team: "Google Wallet does not fit mobile well and the Wallet team is in another building. Let's do our own thing: Android Pay" time passes Chief Googler: "WTF? Why do we have two payment solutions? Let us merge them." Android Team: "We will not give away our control to Team Google Wallet! They have no clue about mobile." Team Google Wallet: "We will not give away our control to Team Android! They have no clue about big business." Chief Googler: "I just created a third new greenfield project. You will both cooperate there. Let's try if it works out." Android Team: "Ok that works for us" Team Google Wallet: "Ok that works for us" time passes Team Three: "Hey this actually works fine on mobile and big business." Chief Googler: "Great. Now let's make this public. Oh, and ... Android Team and Team Google Wallet, you are terminated." Essentially, it was a manager hack to make two teams cooperate. Names have a lot of power when groups of people interact. (I have no clue what actually happens inside Google)
- stock_toaster 9y ago
  I once heard that at Google advancement (and thus salary increase) is significantly pinned to shipping new things. As a result, nobody is incentivized to work on maintenance or improvement of existing things. Everybody wants to ship something new, so they can ride along with it up the corporate elevator.
  - DannyBee 9y ago
    Counterpoint: I've been promoted 5 times (last was to Director), and i've never shipped anything new, only worked on maintenance or improvement of existing things.
  - dandv 9y ago
    It was probably via [this Quora answer](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2016-12?op=0#/#staff-are-rewarded-for-dreaming-up-new-things-even-when-new-things-arent-needed-27 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things...). I don't think that's entirely accurate. There are efforts to reward Product Excellence, for example, which involved UX polish, performance tuning etc.
bane 9y ago
This nails it. At this point, I don't even bother signing up for Google services because they'll all just change or go away or whatever in a few months so what's the point?
justhw 9y ago
Offtopic. Did you just coin MMD? I googled but couldn't find other discussions on the term.
- dwaite 9y ago
  I believe it used to be called something else
sorenjan 9y ago
One of my favorite examples is looking at the Google Trends page for Google Allo [0]. Lots of initial interest at release, but since it didn't add anything to what people already was using, including Google hangouts, interest soon faded away. Google's practice of release early, release often, doesn't really work when entering a market with strong established products. Good luck getting people to try convincing their friends to switch to a different chat app they already tried and didn't like. Google is known for attracting top engineers, but their product managers seems to be some of the worst in the industry. Where would they be without their ad cash cow? It's been years since I got exited about anything they released. I think I noticed it getting worse right around when Eric Schmidt got replaced as CEO. [0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2016-07-01%202018-01-09&q=google%20allo https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2016-07-01%202...
- dandv 9y ago
  Maps has been improving at an amazing rate, and some people are quite excited about it: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    Agreed. The "search along route" feature during navigation was a long time coming, but when they finally implemented it they did it perfectly.
  - sorenjan 9y ago
    At least where I live (Sweden) Google Maps is often worse than OpenStreetMap, and there are several other sites with both better aerial photography and map data. I also think Google Maps' white on gray color scheme is hard to read. I made this as an example [0]. It's Google Maps, OpenStreetMaps, a local competitor (Hitta), and the official government map agency (Lantmäteriet) that Google used to buy their map data from according to their copyright info. Notice several features missing in Google's data, and how bland and low contrast it is in comparison. Speaking of which, try finding this road on Google Maps using your phone when the sun is shining: [1] Google's aerial photos in the same area is from 2014 and is both lower resolution and older than the two alternatives I looked at. I still use Google Maps quite a lot, but in my opinion they're slipping and doesn't seem to care about keeping data updated as much as having local guides reviewing restaurants and grocery stores. [0] https://imgur.com/a/DxImF https://imgur.com/a/DxImF [1] https://imgur.com/a/aPtiD https://imgur.com/a/aPtiD
remir 9y ago
I think Google Pay makes more sense than Android Pay for two reasons: The first is that non-technical people don't seem to know what is Android. They know their phone is a Samsung Galaxy, LG G series or a Motorola, but most of them don't know that their phone is an Android or that Google is making the OS. It doesn't help that Google renamed the Android Market to Google Play. So in the eyes of the everyday man, Google is a better known brand than Android. The second reason is Fuchsia, which I believe could be Android's successor. I think Google want this OS to be everywhere; on phones, tablets, laptops, servers, IoT devices, etc, and since it will be updated and maintained directly by them, version numbers will be irrelevant for most people. In other words, there won't be a Fuchsia 1, 2, 3. It will be updated constantly like Chrome and probably named something like "Google OS". So having a payment solution that is named Google Pay make sense when there's a possibility that Android is not Google's future on mobile (and everywhere else).
- spc476 9y ago
  Wasn't Google's Fuchsia just renamed Zircon? Or is that something else? I can't keep up any more.
  - niftich 9y ago
    Magenta [1] was renamed Zircon. The component in question is the kernel for Fuchsia. [1] https://9to5google.com/2017/09/13/google-fuchsia-os-kernel-zircon-rename/ https://9to5google.com/2017/09/13/google-fuchsia-os-kernel-z...
    - Andrenid 9y ago
      Tech names have lost the plot. We really really need to get past this "Pick a really common English word and name your brand that, so it's impossible to search for and confuses people when discussed" thing.
Steko 9y ago
> Google has caught MMD (Microsoft Marketing Disease) In two years Google Pay and Samsung Pay will merge and the new service will be called Pays For Sure.

mikestew 9y ago

Google has caught MMD (Microsoft Marketing Disease) Microsoft was exactly my first thought when I read this. "Are they pulling a SkyDrive here, and it's just rebranded Google Wallet?" And I use SkyDrive as an example because I lost count of how many times Microsoft renamed their online storage, to the point that I just gave up and used Dropbox. It must work, or companies wouldn't do it. But it just alienates me. Is this the new boss, same as the old boss? Or a new product with new things I should take a look at? Does it work better than when I tried to use Google Wallet when I had Android? Aww, fuck it, I'll just keep using Apple Pay.

laken 9y ago
Not to try to invalidate your point (because Microsoft is definitely guilty of this practice), but SkyDrive was rebranded for legal reasons*, instead of marketing reasons. https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/28/uks-bskyb-wins-judgement-against-microsoft-over-use-of-skydrive-name-in-europe/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/28/uks-bskyb-wins-judgement-a...
- mikestew 9y ago
  Yeesh, out of all the choices available, I had to pick the worst example, eh? Feel free to substitute "Live Mesh" or "FolderShare". :-)
  - mynameisvlad 9y ago
    I would say the difference with those examples and Pay with Google (as well as Google's other rebrands) is that Live Mesh and FolderShare really weren't being used prior to rolling them into Live Drive/SkyDrive/OneDrive (whenever those got integrated, it's been years). The rebrand was intentional to try and get them to be used more by attaching them to a more successful brand, which happened to be the one for our online storage. Google likes taking successful products and then rebranding them out of the blue for no real reason other than to seem "integrated". Things like splitting off messaging from Hangouts, which was already an amalgamation of features and other products like Google Talk and the old messaging app. Or like Google Pay, which is an amalgamation of a bunch of other successful products like Android Pay (which was itself an amalgamation of other products like Google Wallet and Google Checkout along with certain acquisitions). With Google, it just seems like they constantly have FOMO of being on the "hot new brand".
  - booleandilemma 9y ago
    Lync / Skype for Business?
    - discordance 9y ago
      Lync -> Skype for Biz -> Teams
proee 9y ago
And don't forget Microsoft search. Before "Bing" it was called "Live" and I think there were a few more names before that as well. I'm surprised the name Bing is still around and not replaced with something else.
- kbenson 9y ago
  Before all that was MSN.com search. Now it redirects to Bing.
bsimpson 9y ago
You can pick examples at most big companies. iTools => mobileMe => iCloud.

djsumdog 9y ago

> that are successful, but not market-leading I was thinking, isn't this just Google's standard competition with Apple Pay and PayPal/Vinmo?

jacksmith21006 9y ago

Really depends on the product. They had several iterations of photos before they landed on Google photos which is excellent and industry leading but took a while.

chasil 9y ago
Any activity involving my finances will require current security patches. Because these are unavailable for >95% of Android phones, I have not and will not use these services. I'm (currently) on LineageOS with the December security update - Android Pay doesn't work there, not that I ever wanted it anyway.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  Android Pay is worthwhile even if you never use it for payment purposes. It also holds discount/membership cards. For example, my IKEA, Jet Blue, CVS, and Walgreens cards are in there. I don't know if you use those types of things, but they don't seem to warrant the type of security a credit card would.
dandv 9y ago
I don't know how excellent Google Photos is. https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/photos/9so7okdj1ZA/2kjAWzf4AgAJ https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/photos/9so7okdj1ZA/2k... When it comes to organization beyond shoving photos at it and hoping for the AI's best, Photos is deeply disappointing. Competitors like Fotki has nested albums 10 years ago. Photos doesn't show your device folders on the web, and can't move files locally without crashing or duplicating them.

testplzignore 9y ago

This got me thinking that I don't really know what products Microsoft even sells anymore. I know they have Windows and Office of course, but do they even still sell Windows, or is it all ad-driven revenue now? And of course they have bing.com, which is ad-driven. And Xbox, though that itself has gone through a similiar series of confusing names (Xbox 360 is Xbox 2 and Xbox One is Xbox 3?!). I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live, which has a list of various online products that have been renamed or killed off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Shopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Shopping is the most ridiculous one, which has gone through every possible name except for "MSDOS Shopping". I had no idea it even existed.

__david__ 9y ago
> do they even still sell Windows, or is it all ad-driven revenue now? Yes. I built a gaming PC last year and had to buy Windows 10 since I wasn't upgrading any existing computer. It's not cheap either—it was one of the high cost components of the system.
- Tempest1981 9y ago
  And Win10 now has (what many consider) ads: https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-windows-10-ads-taskbar-file-explorer https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-window...
- titanix2 9y ago
  You could have used a non activated version with a free image provided by MS as the only downside now is a few customization options disabled. It shows as far as MS is willing to go to put Win 10 in people throat.
addicted 9y ago
They are still making a lot of money selling Windows. Every OEM has to buy a copy of Windows. The only difference is that now they don't charge for upgrades. Which is extremely smart because the cost of supporting people on decade old OSes probably significantly exceeds the revenues earned from consumers who are buying Windows upgrades to their existing PCs. Oh, and enterprise licenses are the same, if I am not mistaken. Frankly, MS not making updates free earlier was them shooting themselves in their foot.

qznc 9y ago

My best guess is that we see internal politics leak out. Product names are a "leaky abstraction" over organization structure. In the case of Google: Chief Googler: "We need a payments product: Google Wallet" time passes Android Team: "Google Wallet does not fit mobile well and the Wallet team is in another building. Let's do our own thing: Android Pay" time passes Chief Googler: "WTF? Why do we have two payment solutions? Let us merge them." Android Team: "We will not give away our control to Team Google Wallet! They have no clue about mobile." Team Google Wallet: "We will not give away our control to Team Android! They have no clue about big business." Chief Googler: "I just created a third new greenfield project. You will both cooperate there. Let's try if it works out." Android Team: "Ok that works for us" Team Google Wallet: "Ok that works for us" time passes Team Three: "Hey this actually works fine on mobile and big business." Chief Googler: "Great. Now let's make this public. Oh, and ... Android Team and Team Google Wallet, you are terminated." Essentially, it was a manager hack to make two teams cooperate. Names have a lot of power when groups of people interact. (I have no clue what actually happens inside Google)

stock_toaster 9y ago
I once heard that at Google advancement (and thus salary increase) is significantly pinned to shipping new things. As a result, nobody is incentivized to work on maintenance or improvement of existing things. Everybody wants to ship something new, so they can ride along with it up the corporate elevator.
- DannyBee 9y ago
  Counterpoint: I've been promoted 5 times (last was to Director), and i've never shipped anything new, only worked on maintenance or improvement of existing things.
- dandv 9y ago
  It was probably via [this Quora answer](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2016-12?op=0#/#staff-are-rewarded-for-dreaming-up-new-things-even-when-new-things-arent-needed-27 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-worst-things...). I don't think that's entirely accurate. There are efforts to reward Product Excellence, for example, which involved UX polish, performance tuning etc.

bane 9y ago

This nails it. At this point, I don't even bother signing up for Google services because they'll all just change or go away or whatever in a few months so what's the point?

justhw 9y ago

Offtopic. Did you just coin MMD? I googled but couldn't find other discussions on the term.

dwaite 9y ago
I believe it used to be called something else

sorenjan 9y ago

One of my favorite examples is looking at the Google Trends page for Google Allo [0]. Lots of initial interest at release, but since it didn't add anything to what people already was using, including Google hangouts, interest soon faded away. Google's practice of release early, release often, doesn't really work when entering a market with strong established products. Good luck getting people to try convincing their friends to switch to a different chat app they already tried and didn't like. Google is known for attracting top engineers, but their product managers seems to be some of the worst in the industry. Where would they be without their ad cash cow? It's been years since I got exited about anything they released. I think I noticed it getting worse right around when Eric Schmidt got replaced as CEO. [0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2016-07-01%202018-01-09&q=google%20allo https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2016-07-01%202...

dandv 9y ago
Maps has been improving at an amazing rate, and some people are quite excited about it: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat
- jessriedel 9y ago
  Agreed. The "search along route" feature during navigation was a long time coming, but when they finally implemented it they did it perfectly.
- sorenjan 9y ago
  At least where I live (Sweden) Google Maps is often worse than OpenStreetMap, and there are several other sites with both better aerial photography and map data. I also think Google Maps' white on gray color scheme is hard to read. I made this as an example [0]. It's Google Maps, OpenStreetMaps, a local competitor (Hitta), and the official government map agency (Lantmäteriet) that Google used to buy their map data from according to their copyright info. Notice several features missing in Google's data, and how bland and low contrast it is in comparison. Speaking of which, try finding this road on Google Maps using your phone when the sun is shining: [1] Google's aerial photos in the same area is from 2014 and is both lower resolution and older than the two alternatives I looked at. I still use Google Maps quite a lot, but in my opinion they're slipping and doesn't seem to care about keeping data updated as much as having local guides reviewing restaurants and grocery stores. [0] https://imgur.com/a/DxImF https://imgur.com/a/DxImF [1] https://imgur.com/a/aPtiD https://imgur.com/a/aPtiD

remir 9y ago

I think Google Pay makes more sense than Android Pay for two reasons: The first is that non-technical people don't seem to know what is Android. They know their phone is a Samsung Galaxy, LG G series or a Motorola, but most of them don't know that their phone is an Android or that Google is making the OS. It doesn't help that Google renamed the Android Market to Google Play. So in the eyes of the everyday man, Google is a better known brand than Android. The second reason is Fuchsia, which I believe could be Android's successor. I think Google want this OS to be everywhere; on phones, tablets, laptops, servers, IoT devices, etc, and since it will be updated and maintained directly by them, version numbers will be irrelevant for most people. In other words, there won't be a Fuchsia 1, 2, 3. It will be updated constantly like Chrome and probably named something like "Google OS". So having a payment solution that is named Google Pay make sense when there's a possibility that Android is not Google's future on mobile (and everywhere else).

spc476 9y ago
Wasn't Google's Fuchsia just renamed Zircon? Or is that something else? I can't keep up any more.
- niftich 9y ago
  Magenta [1] was renamed Zircon. The component in question is the kernel for Fuchsia. [1] https://9to5google.com/2017/09/13/google-fuchsia-os-kernel-zircon-rename/ https://9to5google.com/2017/09/13/google-fuchsia-os-kernel-z...
  - Andrenid 9y ago
    Tech names have lost the plot. We really really need to get past this "Pick a really common English word and name your brand that, so it's impossible to search for and confuses people when discussed" thing.

Steko 9y ago

> Google has caught MMD (Microsoft Marketing Disease) In two years Google Pay and Samsung Pay will merge and the new service will be called Pays For Sure.