I am just astonished at how bad HBO/Warners' ability to brand these things is. Currently they have two streaming services, HBO GO and HBO NOW, both of which st

I am just astonished at how bad HBO/Warners' ability to brand these things is. Currently they have two streaming services, HBO GO and HBO NOW, both of which stream the same programming (whatever's on HBO) but are different because one's for people who subscribe to HBO on cable and the other is for everyone else. The services have easily mixed-up names that have nothing to do with the difference between them, and practically identical logos/icons, so it's super easy for new users to get confused about which one they actually want. Warner's solution to this confusion is to add a third streaming service, also branded with the HBO name, but not having any connection to HBO beyond carrying some of its programming. If you already have HBO GO or HBO NOW, that subscription doesn't mean you can access HBO MAX; as far as I can see it doesn't even earn you a discount on it. And if you're coming to HBO as a cord-cutter, now instead of there at least being only one choice that's right for you, you now have to choose between HBO NOW and HBO MAX -- and they don't even do you the courtesy of at least clearly positioning MAX as "everything on HBO plus some more stuff" so the choice can be simplified to "just HBO" vs. "HBO++". If you were going to set out to intentionally design a menu of streaming services that was as confusing as possible to the customer, you'd be hard pressed to do better than this...