"Google One" suffers from designer in a box syndrome.
It's probably a great internal name - hey, we've been providing storage for photos, email, docs, drive, and more, for over a decade, and we've finally integrated that storage into one space, so let's call it Google one! It's a great name - simple and powerful, symbolizes the effort and direction we've taken in the past 5-10 years of integrating our consumer, day to day products.
However, outside of the Google box, no one understands or cares what they've been doing. "Google one" sounds like... nothing. "What is it???" is an extremely appropriate response.
Maybe in the future it will come to symbolize all the services of Google, available in one centralized location, allowing for future consumers to easily access all of google services without separate pay schemes, storage, or
other infrastructure, and make it a 1 stop shop for your services needs, common or obscure.
But right now, the copy and landing page are way off the messaging mark.
I wish for once they would really offer a unified storage-solution. But Yet it's all just a colelction of different storages with different interfaces, rules and so on. Google Drive has integrateion into all their services somehow, and Google Photos has some bad integration into Google Drive. But what about Google Books? Google Music? Google Mail? Youtube and all the other stuff they have? At best they have some import/export-functionalitity, not a real "One-for-all" type of filemanaging-solution.
I haven't tested Google One yet, but it doesn;t seem to change anything there, just offering more space for them all.
> "Google one" sounds like... nothing. "What is it???"
It sounds precisely like Amazon's "Prime" brand, and it's no coincidence. It's a sunk-cost feature to convince you to come back (like membership shopping clubs - Costco, Sams). Unfortunately I don't think it has the draw of 'free shipping' (+ music/TV/etc).
Interesting comment; as a non-native speaker "prime" evokes the idea of f'(x) and prime numbers. Prime is pretty silly (e.g., "Optimus Prime") and might be an inside joke.
What are these positive connotations? To me prime sounds neutral, like a fact.
Prime has a well established meaning and predates Amazon by, well, probably centuries. It is also well aligned with their original usage, in that preferred customers could pay more to get better treatment (faster deliveries and customer service response).
I think you're right on there. When I saw the title, my initial thought was that Google had developed some kind of rocket! In other words, the name gives so little information about what the product actually is that it could be literally anything.
i thought it is something to replace Google Plus :)
Speaking about bad namings - reminds me how back at Sun at one moment everything became "Java" (even stock ticker, no kidding). "We've got just 5 product boxes (Java this and Java that), just 5 boxes, that's all! Simplify things for the customer!" Lets just say that naming as Java various non-Java things simplified nothing for nobody.
Perhaps this is going the away of Amazon Prime - which started off as subscription for faster shipping but grew to be a one-stop subscription for various things?
A lot of Windows users probably know about OneDrive (https://onedrive.live.com/) since this is a similar service, I totally understand the naming choice here.
Ironically OneDrive used to be SkyDrive until Sky sued them. I guess everyone's switching to numbers because words are all trademarked, apart from the phoneme strings generated by the pharma industry.
When Porsche was releasing the 911 back in the 60s, Porsche wanted to name it “901”. Except Peugeot had a trademark on three-digit model numbers with a zero in the middle...
By talking to the French patent office, circa 1950s, apparently. I don't know what you're on about with the rest, but I'm just parroting what's well-documented, you're welcome to go look it up.
I figured you had to trademark specific numbers, not a regular expression "[0-9]+ 0 [0-9]+", which is how I'd guess it would work in the US, vs enumerating all the numbers in separate trademarks (patent #1 (100), patent #2 (101), ... (909)).
Also: "One" has so bad SEO that Google One does not show up on the first page of Google Search results and OneDrive only on the third page. Google One was not on the first five pages.
Its not a rip off, its just a very generic name. Tons of products do this, I assume because its relatively safe play when you can't (or don't want) a more standout branding.
“One” is generic...but it’s not descriptive. In other words it’s not cloud, drive, OS, etc. So in the context of computer goods and services One could be trademarked (which of course MS has). It’s like saying Apple is generic, it is but as Apple relates to computers and software it receives trademark protections.
When MS uses “one” across its product spectrum (OneDrive, Xbox One, One OS, One Note, One Guide) then google uses One...it’s not the same as MS OneDrive and Google Drive (ie descriptive) it’s more on par with MS creating a social network and calling it MS+. I think most would agree that’s either a ripoff or at least fail on many levels.
But MS OneNote was released right around the same time.
But let’s be serious Google spent millions to brand/launch this, and it’s got to be embarrassing that either: a. None of the yesmen thought to speak up and say hey should we really use a name MS uses for a bunch of their products (One Note, Xbox One, One OS, One Guide); or b. Straight ripped it.
Had they called it “iDrive”, or summat, the rip-off would have been obvious even though Apple has no such named product. Little accessory makers can get away with such naming because a) “Cheap-Ass iAccessories” isn’t a household name and b) their product probably has something to do with Apple stuff.
For a company like Google, I find it a bit embarrassing.
> Thank you for uploading 2 TB of data. Unfortunately Google One is being phased out and you will have until July 31st to download your data before it is pruned. Our new storage product is called Google Two - we don't currently have a migration program so you'll need to download and reupload your data once you pay for a Google Two membership. Thank you for being a loyal cus-tomb-er!
And a G+ instant archiving button will be their 'killer' feature in a couple of months. KA-CHING!!
Yes, it will even conveniently estimate the exact plan you'll need to purchase in order to store all of your posts, collections, and important communities.
whats Stripe mean? Whats Google mean? Whats Uber mean? Paul Graham has an essay about how the name of your company doesn't really mean anything, and you should always pick a name with the .com available.
It also seems to symbolize Google's real new mission statement, changed from "Organizing the world's information" to "Collecting all of your information*, whether they publicly admit to it or not.
It's probably a great internal name - hey, we've been providing storage for photos, email, docs, drive, and more, for over a decade, and we've finally integrated that storage into one space, so let's call it Google one! It's a great name - simple and powerful, symbolizes the effort and direction we've taken in the past 5-10 years of integrating our consumer, day to day products.
However, outside of the Google box, no one understands or cares what they've been doing. "Google one" sounds like... nothing. "What is it???" is an extremely appropriate response.
Maybe in the future it will come to symbolize all the services of Google, available in one centralized location, allowing for future consumers to easily access all of google services without separate pay schemes, storage, or other infrastructure, and make it a 1 stop shop for your services needs, common or obscure.
But right now, the copy and landing page are way off the messaging mark.