If people can’t figure out what Froogle is, imagine how confused they are with all the Web 2.0 brand names

Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 by Rex Hammock

Google is de-branding its product price comparison tool, dropping what the company admits now was an ill-conceived brand, “Froogle,” and calling it something that I hope they didn’t pay a consultant to dream up, but what is a vast improvement and worthy of whatever the fee was, nonetheless: Google Product Search.

Quote from CNET News.com:

“I don’t think we understood the complications with rolling out another brand,” Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search product and user experience, said. “While it was a cute and clever name, it had issues around copyright and trademark, as well as internationalization…The pun (to “frugal”) isn’t obvious.”

I’m impressed with her candor.

I think it’s also telling that Foogle, introduced in 2005, never dropped the “Beta” — until, well, now.

Bonus links:

Lots of good links on Techmeme.com. On all things search, my go-to blogger is Danny Sullivan.

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About Rex Hammock

Founder/ceo of Hammock Inc., the customer media and content company based in Nashville, Tenn. Creator of and head-helper at SmallBusiness.com.
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  • http://mycropht.wordpress.com Katherine Coble

    Is it wrong to express my dismay about a society where the pun of the name “wasn’t obvious”?

  • tf

    It still is “Beta” under the new name, and it still appears as “Froogle” under “More >>” from the main Google search bar (Probably because “Product Search” wouldn’t fit well in the contextual menu… or someone wasn’t paying much attention).

  • http://www.webomatica.com/wordpress/ Webomatica

    Well – I can relate. I’ve had many an instance when I tell someone to go to “flickr” and they type in “flicker.com”. And when I say “uh, there’s no e” they ask “Why?” and I have no answer.

    It’s hard to remember all the creative names of these Web 2.0 sites and even harder to remember the misspellings.

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