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Thursday, August 26, 2004
Naseem Javed weighs in on the importance of a good name for the next big, hypothetical search engine challenger to Google. He seems to favor "serious and sober" corporate names because he thinks that's what the financial markets want to see.
Javed may be good at selling his naming services. The success of clever, well-chosen brand names like Clinique proves that a name can matter a lot. Given the challenges of finding a unique one, it's probably worth paying for a good one too, if you've got enough cash in the bank.
But substantively in this case he seems to be taking an overcautious line. It's possible that the lack of a flexible "skateboardy" image actually hurts a modern technology company in its efforts to recruit employees and win loyal customers.
And at the end of the day, you've got to have the goods and a business model that works. Inktomi is a superb name. But they made poor strategic choices. Accompany.com changed their name to MobShop using the services of a naming consultant. The marketplace wasn't interested in either.
If Google had listened to Javed, they'd be called SearchBot.com or Lookentium or Profundium or Umlauture.
I also notice that Yahoo! isn't doing too badly as a publicly-traded entity.
Compare and contrast a Traffick article on a similar subject: Differentiation Can be Brutal in the Web Search Business. Evidently the name is only a small aspect of the pursuit of industry leadership.
So what do you think would be a good name for the next big search engine challenger? I think Inktomi would be great. It could happen.
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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D'oh!
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