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A comment on Google Pay. Parent comment

Re:Google Pay by mikestew on Monday January 08, 2018 @04:01PM (#16100526)
Google has caught MMD (Microsoft Marketing Disease)

Microsoft was exactly my first thought when I read this. "Are they pulling a SkyDrive here, and it's just rebranded Google Wallet?" And I use SkyDrive as an example because I lost count of how many times Microsoft renamed their online storage, to the point that I just gave up and used Dropbox.

It must work, or companies wouldn't do it. But it just alienates me. Is this the new boss, same as the old boss? Or a new product with new things I should take a look at? Does it work better than when I tried to use Google Wallet when I had Android? Aww, fuck it, I'll just keep using Apple Pay.

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Re:Google Pay by laken on Monday January 08, 2018 @04:08PM (#16100604)
Not to try to invalidate your point (because Microsoft is definitely guilty of this practice), but SkyDrive was rebranded for legal reasons*, instead of marketing reasons.

https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/28/uks-bskyb-wins-judgement-a...

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Re:Google Pay by mikestew on Monday January 08, 2018 @04:18PM (#16100686)
Yeesh, out of all the choices available, I had to pick the worst example, eh? Feel free to substitute "Live Mesh" or "FolderShare". :-)
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Re:Google Pay by merb on Monday January 08, 2018 @07:49PM (#16102477)
msn messenger -> live messenger.

hotmail.com -> Windows Live Mail -> hotmail -> outlook.com

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Re:Google Pay by Too on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @12:28AM (#16103845)
You missed a few steps for messenger: Live Messenger -> skype -> lynq -> skype for business
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Re:Google Pay by merb on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @02:56AM (#16104364)
well basically we talked about renames and live messenger actually was canceled for skype and not renamed. the other examples were just renames with/without a new ui.
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Re:Google Pay by booleandilemma on Monday January 08, 2018 @06:43PM (#16102050)
Lync / Skype for Business?
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Re:Google Pay by discordance on Monday January 08, 2018 @08:17PM (#16102621)
Lync -> Skype for Biz -> Teams
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Re:Google Pay by indemnity on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @01:12PM (#16108287)
It’s been renamed again? Word of this has not yet trickled down to my group.

I wish they’d put some of the renaming energy into improving the reliability of their Mac and iOS apps....

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Re:Google Pay by marcosdumay on Monday January 08, 2018 @08:21PM (#16102644)
Previously "communicator" ;)
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Re:Google Pay by mynameisvlad on Monday January 08, 2018 @04:44PM (#16100916)
I would say the difference with those examples and Pay with Google (as well as Google's other rebrands) is that Live Mesh and FolderShare really weren't being used prior to rolling them into Live Drive/SkyDrive/OneDrive (whenever those got integrated, it's been years). The rebrand was intentional to try and get them to be used more by attaching them to a more successful brand, which happened to be the one for our online storage.

Google likes taking successful products and then rebranding them out of the blue for no real reason other than to seem "integrated". Things like splitting off messaging from Hangouts, which was already an amalgamation of features and other products like Google Talk and the old messaging app. Or like Google Pay, which is an amalgamation of a bunch of other successful products like Android Pay (which was itself an amalgamation of other products like Google Wallet and Google Checkout along with certain acquisitions). With Google, it just seems like they constantly have FOMO of being on the "hot new brand".

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Re:Google Pay by bsimpson on Monday January 08, 2018 @07:35PM (#16102394)
You can pick examples at most big companies.

iTools => mobileMe => iCloud.

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Re:Google Pay by proee on Monday January 08, 2018 @07:08PM (#16102234)
And don't forget Microsoft search. Before "Bing" it was called "Live" and I think there were a few more names before that as well.

I'm surprised the name Bing is still around and not replaced with something else.

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Re:Google Pay by kbenson on Monday January 08, 2018 @07:44PM (#16102445)
Before all that was MSN.com search. Now it redirects to Bing.
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