“While a bad name isn’t enough to sink a brand on its own, several of the biggest shed some puzzling titles before becoming worldwide hit,” Pete D’Amato reports for The Daily Mail.
“According to CNBC, electronics chain Best Buy was still called Sound of Music back in 1981 when the brand’s Roseville, Minnesota, store was reduced to rubble by a tornado,” D’Amato reports. “Afterwards, the store held a ‘Tornado Sale’ in the parking lot advertising ‘best buys’ on damaged electronics. Two years later, all the stores were rebranded as Best Buy.”
“Google, the most popular search engine provider, earned that name two years after it was founded in 1986, under infinitely less catchy name BackRub,” D’Amato reports. “One of the most profitable companies in history, Apple Inc, made only a subtle change from Apple Computers [sic] in 2007 as the company moved into other areas of consumer electronics.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s funny that an article about old brand names gets Apple’s original name wrong, like oh-so-many unfortunately do. For us, at least, it’s tiring.
Apple was incorporated as “Apple Computer, Inc.” on January 3, 1977, and was renamed as “Apple Inc.” (they dropped the “Computer” and the comma) on January 9, 2007.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Apple underwent the least changes by far I’d say. Logo change was big, but it seems once they decided they needed a logo for putting on products and overall branding, they made one. The original was more of something they intended to use on letterheads and whatnot.
Dropping the “Computer” word was cool when they announced it. Although they do still make primarily computers… Just smaller ones that do more stuff 😛
Wow, so glad I could use Google way back when on my Laser 128 – basically a ][C clone.
I hate it when articles get dates wrong. 1996, not 1986.
LG used to go by Goldstar
Nissan used to be called Datsun (in US)
Bell Telephone became AT&T
Bell Labs became Lucent
HP became Agilent
There’s tones of other examples. This article is pathetic, because of how shallow it is. So many wrong facts.
LG actually _was_ Lucky Goldstar. Goldstar was a branding for the US version.
I’ve always liked Epson’s genesis. They made a printer called, yup, Excellent Printer, an old dot-matrix beast. Epson came about from, yup, Son of Excellent Printer.
Lazy lazy lazy modern tech journalism.
English is a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.
Didn’t the Beatles sue them again when they changed from Apple Computers, Inc. to Apple, Inc.? I seem to remember that lawsuits were flying all over again.
No, because there was never an “Apple Computers”. It was “Apple Computer” I see this mistake often.
google is just a friendly name for “NSA Realtime Terrorist Tracking and Telemetry Services”.