4 ms·

I’m not sure Amazon really had much of a PR department back in 2005 when they launched the service and named it after a chess-playing “automaton” that had a hum

I’m not sure Amazon really had much of a PR department back in 2005 when they launched the service and named it after a chess-playing “automaton” that had a human hidden in it to do all the thinking. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

jessaustin 8y ago
If an 11yo firm with billions in revenue could avoid having "much of a PR department", I'm impressed. Even one PR person would seem to be enough to avoid naming a product after a nationality...
- pchristensen 8y ago
  Of course Amazon has a PR department. But it also has thousands of teams and products, most of which were started by a handful of people and grown (or killed off if unsuccessful). There's a big difference between handling the global scale news stories Amazon is involved in and the naming of new products.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Shouldn't your product naming go through a review process?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - yorwba 8y ago
      That doesn't guarantee that a name like "Mechanical Turk" will be rejected. Maybe they asked a Turk who believed it to be unlikely to be an issue. Personally, I think the historical reference is clever, but then I'd say the same if someone named an autonomous ship-control system "Flying Dutchman". Maybe I just have bad taste.
      - therein 8y ago
        As a Turk I do not find the name offensive at all and I am certain most Turks would find it amusing had they heard of the product/service.
- wavefunction 8y ago
  Turk is an ethnicity.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    It's both (there is a real nation called "Turkey"), but why would one be more "acceptable" than the other?