Knol is Google’s newest assault on the rest of the internet. (They’re convinced they own it.) I’m sure it will do well, because it’s a Google property, but…
K-N-O-L is their brand name? I couldn’t think of a worse name if I tried. In fact, I’ll offer a cash prize for a worse name. (Details at the end of this article.) First, let’s explore this:
- Knol contains a silent letter.
- Phonetically, It starts and ends with a soft consonant. (This guarantees the following conversation will be had countless times… “Blah blah blah Knol.” “What?”)
- It’s a play on the word knowledge, masquerading as the root. (Which is actually “know”.) But they drop the “w” and add the “l” leaving us with “knol.”
- They don’t even own Knol.com. Knol is at knol.google.com. Knol.com, on the other hand, sells steam cleaners in Sweden. No kidding. This is who Google couldn’t afford to buy out.
Google is liquid to the tune of $10 billion dollars. Couldn’t they buy knol.com? Or even something nice like know.com, or known.com? And what’s with the web 2.0 drop-a-letter-add-a-letter bandwagon? This is going to look passé in 6 months. It kinda looks that way right now.
Apple Inc. just bought Me.com. Now that’s a domain. That’s a brand name. Sure the launch sucked, but no one will care in 6 months. They will, however, still be having this conversation:
“…Knol.”
“What?”
“No. KNOL.”
“What!?”
“KNOLLLL.”
“Nal?”
“Eh, screw it.”
Google was a game changer 6 years ago, but that is an eternity in web-years. They’re looking more and more like Microsoft or General Motors when it comes to fresh innovation and execution. It’s like they’re trying to confuse.
In fact, if anyone can come up with a worse brand name than Knol, post it in the comments. Next week I’ll pick out the worst one and Paypal you $50.
The Rules:
- Has to be SFW.
- 2 syllable maximum.
- Has to be pronounceable.
- I’ll announce the winner here next week. (I’ll also send them an email.)
- If you’re related to me or someone who works at Voltage, you can’t win.
- The winner is my pick, which means no whining if/when you lose.
- One entry per email address.
- Cuil doesn’t count.
Update: We Have a Winner
There are 101 Comments Leave A Comment
Cuil should count.
Awful name.
I’m just trying to block the obvious choice.
How about….
nuTsie
yes, the T is capitalized. Anagram of iTunes.
http://www.nutsie.com
Named after a photoshopped picture of a squirrel with an enormous ballsack, no joke. Just look at the favicon.
Knol.com is Dutch. The links at the bottom is a tribute to various sites that apparently got the link wrong and linked to knol.com.
I’m not a dutch-speaker, but the copy goes something like, “Knol steam cleaning systems would like to thank the following sites, amoung others: ….. The favour is completely overwhelming”.
Geek Squad…. I don’t really have to lobby and put up a witty comment for this to win do I?
Aids. Google Aids. As in “knowledge aids” or “learning aids”, of course.
Since it is Google, I’m surprised they didn’t use
“Gnol”
which would be worse. A little.
Google Null.
Pierre
http://grobli.com (pronounced grow-blee)
“The new millenium’s repository for all knol-edge.” ;)
My hard work is shown below.
1) Pick random language: German.
2) Translating “great library” from English to German yields “große Bibliothek”.
Now, let’s mix it up a bit to give it that Web 2.0 flair.
3) Use “grob” for great (ß looks like a “b”, doesn’t it?) and “li” for library.
Bonus) Using namecheap, it looks like grobli.com is available! :)
I assume the limit of two syllables is to exclude the otherwise obvious winner: MobileMe.
doostang.com
I agree that knol is hard to top.
“Libe”
Short for Library. Somehow.
I respectfully submit “Ghoti™” (prounounced: fish).
I think that Ghoti™ symbolizes a re-contextualized stable approach that is offbeat enough to be Web 2.0, easy enough to say, and easy enough to write. It also smells like lemon, can make your bed, and will sing Stevie Nicks songs at the drop of a hat.
If you were to start a PayPal-like company, what’s the first domain name that comes to mind? Were you thinking Flooz.com too?
Nothing spells success like a name that could be confused with “a usually young woman of loose morals (Webster)” or the plural of a virus. Not even $35mil could help that one.
I can’t believe that no-one has submitted Wang.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories
Are you looking for an existing name, or an original one we just make up?
Knul. As in “null.”
Brainema?
“GNU”.
It has to be ‘AdeZ’ for me. If mango flavoured soya milk wasn’t a bad enough prospect then having a name that everyone pronounces ‘Aids’ instead of the two syllable ‘A-des’ as it’s apparently supposed to be pronounced is the killer blow.
At least they own the domain name http://www.adez.com
Oh, and I forgot that AdeZ is a Unilever brand.
Knolecules, since Knol is a play on the word mol, which is a unit of molecular measurement.
I took another look at Knol. What a mess. A “verified” article said that Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Charles Babbage (she’s the daughter of Lord Byron). It’s been fixed now. Someone posted the correction in the comments. Another person replied to the correction saying “Sorry, the librarian in me wants to point you to a more authoritative source” because the person posting the correction referenced Wikipedia.
I find that ironic. Google Knol tries to be authoritative, yet Wikipedia turns out to be right. So what does a commenter do? Insist on using an authoritative site.
This is not a community that I want to be a part of, and I agree that the name sucks.
http://knol.google.com/k/jennifer-taylor/the-decline-of-women-in-computer/u67r-Ndua/5hwjo0#
GNU is bad indeed :D
“Zott”, it’s a german milk related product brand: http://www.zott.de/
Bad sound! and more, they aired some TV ads in my country (Belgium) with a small kid singing a bad rap (you know like the bad-rap-ad in wayne’s world). You also have to know that “zot” means “dipwad” in local dialect from Brussels.
I must say that the exclamation mark at the end of Yahoo! has always bothered me.
“Flickr” is unpronounceable in French.
“Yast” from Suse is awfull….
Erud.
From the root erudition. Since the Google idea is that people write articles about stuff they know, and attach their name to the article. The writers are experts in a field, and can show off that expertise. Erudition implies bookish knowledge that is above an average person’s comprehension, so right away the name can give people some unease while at the same time stroke their egos. Are they really smart enough to be reading, let alone writing for this thing? But if you do write for it, doesn’t that make you somehow better than other people?
Now this name doesn’t have the soft ending like Knol, but it does have the advantage of sounding too hard; too short. Erud; sounds like rude.
Since there is no note as to whether has to be an actual brand name, I made up one.
Based on the idea that knowledge + cool (kn + ol) = knol, here is my submission;
knowledge + fun (kn + un) = knun
I don’t know the company I work for has to be up there.
Knouen (no-en)
has the silent K as well, but has the added benefit that you can’t tell anyone it over the phone without spelling it 2x, and when people ask who i work for and i tell them, they think i say no one.
I want to lern more about bizness.
they could have called it “Google Noesis”
…maybe that’s not worse.
My submission: Ayn Rand.
Whol. (As in: something that contains the whol of our knol-edge. Ahem.)
* Silent letter. Could be either W or H, depending!
* Starts and ends with weak sounds.
* Unclear pronunciation. Hole? Hahl? Hall? Wole? Wahl? Wall?
* Potential homonym for “hole”, which yields TONS of awful-sounding spoken constructions. “You got that from a (hole)?” “I’ve got a (hole).” “Hey, look at this (hole)!” “Stick that in your (hole)”.
* One letter away from Whor.
You can’t think of something worse?
Quorn
http://www.quorn.com
Bon apétit! Small unmarked bills, please…
Gigli.
http://www.bullpoo.com
They’ve recently changed it to Duedee.com.
It’s kind of crap.
Most VoIP companies:
Skype
Joost
iSkoot
Phweet
All real and all sound like STDs.
Knofu – as in Knowledge-Fu
All of the words on the site, have their character shifted one position to the right in the alphabet.
Yeah, and you could earn colored belts for your knowledge – Heh, look at me, I have a parchment belt.
Well, I’m a third-degree ancient scrolls belt. :)
How about..
Labi (pronounced Laybee)
A total mutant form of library labratory that ends up just sounding like…well…gotta be SFW
“Knowr”
A forgettable derivative of the word “knowledge”, hurts your mouth to say, a shameless implementation of Domain Naming 2.0 ™, the domain is parked, etc, etc.; a categorically worse brand than “Knol”.
I win.
I work at a company called “Norvax,” which I always thought was a TERRIBLE brand name. It sounds like an antidepressant (which is ironic, since working there tends to have the opposite effect on me).
Joomla!. No question.
Their slightly fattened logotype just compounds the offence.
And in followup to #26, can I nominate .biz as the worst TLD? It’s just so… cheesy.
whizzdumm
ENTREMANEUR – Charting New Courses, Inc.
PORNLYWEDS – Evans Entertainment Corporation
EATAINMENT – Nutratainment, LLC
WEBUME – Thomas J. Jalbert, Individual
INNOVISIONEERING – Econolite Group, Inc.
Fluke
I knew a guy who chose the domain
sieved.com
because he couldn’t afford to get his original idea for the domain: sorted.com.
This domain is hard to remember because:
- who knows how to spell that word, from hearing it?? Is it -ie or -ei ??
- the meaning is not obvious, unlike sorted. To say the least.
Just bad.
Unsurprisingly, the (ambitious) site did not last long.
Also, “sieved” does not exactly roll off the tongue… like ‘Rural Juror’! Ha.
nuur.com
How about “Newer”. Maybe “Nuir” or “Nure”. Nope. I’ve got it. The name for our salon should be Nuur!
Bonus points for involuntarily sounding like a retarded person when you say it! : )
Are you sure the “k” is silent? It’s not if you’re Norwegian.
My favorite bad brand name is from a company that put out a quarterly magazine to push their swimming pool chemicals. It was a contraction of the words “pool” and “life” with the extra “l” brilliantly removed:
Poolife
It was like this for years, but I saw recently that the wayward “l” had made a return.
As far as making one up, how about “eerp”? e-Enterprise Resource Planning. Sounds like throwing up in one’s mouth or that cowboy buried in Colma.
This violates at least two of the rules, but how can we not mention analtech.com? That’s short for “analysis”, for the uninitiated, and yes it is quite real.
I nominate MonCom as the brand for a monetization strategy consulting firm. Park it at moncom.com. Soft consonants abound, impossible to understand over the phone, will confuse anyone close to the military (sounds like “noncom”).
None of these are as bad as Knol.
Wikin – A combination of We, Wiki, and Keen (pronounced we-keen)
Multiple meanings galore and hard to say without sounding like you said ‘we king’, ‘weakling’, or ‘weaken’; depending on your regional dialect.
Hindsight! i should have just said Mon (“visit us at mon.com”). Has all of the benefits of MonCom, above, plus it can be confused easily with HON (the office furniture company), is offensive to Jamaicans, and can lead to hilarious misunderstandings at the airport (it sounds like “bomb”!)
Laszlo.
Used to work there. Tried for 4 years to change it. We didn’t even own Laszlo.com so we had to use Laszlosystems.com. At least once you learn how to spell Knol you wouldn’t ask again….
Porkolt – http://www.porkolt.com
PENSIEVE.
JURNULL
Dogpile has to rank up there.
gelf.com
forcing google + shelf into a very bad brand name.
imagine a blue g
a red e
a yellow l
a blue f
and of course an elf holding a book.
My entry:
“Trogdor!”
1. SFW
2. 2 Syllabels (trog-dor)
3. Pronouncable (see above)
Rlrl.com: Your first stop for reliable reference and learning.
… oh and for those unaware:
Homestar Runner – Trogdor Video
I feel pretty confident about this one:
Zune
TzCah
How about “Orkut”? Or is that too obvious?
It’s more than three syllables, but I think Dan Lyons (a.k.a “Fake Steve Jobs”) hit the nail on the head last year:
http://iamnotstevejobs.blogspot.com/2007/02/john-doerrs-new-company.html
I know most people will think I’m crazy, but…
Verizon
…is a terrible brand. Remember when they launched it after the merger of GTE and BellAtlantic? No one could pronounce it. Thought it was “ver-AH-zahn” not “va-RI-zahn.” And that logo. Yikes.
Just goes to prove that branding can be 10% creative genius and 90% protocol.
Googlecubration
Wordplay of Google and Lucubration, which means any literary effort, esp. of a pretentious or solemn nature.
dot.com
“ELUSIVE KNOLEDGE”
How about learnt.com as in “hey i learnt about it over at google learnt cuz theyz cool”
phamthe
Popl
Pooh-ple
or People, which ever. Dropped a letter or two…
koolbloo (dot com)
2 syllables
A restaurant. Isn’t it obvious?
How about:
Hittla
Chris
spam. a perfectly good brand name, forever spoiled by a monthy python sketch and junk email.
enE
(pronounced like “any”)
Some thoughts on its awfulness:
-2 syllables, sloppy spelling.
-it just sounds nasally and unpleasant
-ene.com already links to an environmental sustainability company
-try slipping those two syllables into a conversation w.o any confusion
-just seeing E-N-E doesn’t imply its proper pronunciation.
I got two for you
http://www.Free.TV Free Television – everyone always thinks it is FreeTV.Com
http://www.beaf.com – ‘what’s your beaf’ a Digg clone – we have to spell it for people not to think beef
Glib
for Google Library.
Wisdoh
pronounced: wizdo
“A unit of Wisdom”
rexam.
you’d hope that after 125 years of proctology jokes, they’d have thought of something better.
Phlegm
-Philadelphia General Managers, Inc
Monday
see http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1038748.html
@sglewis What’s so bad/funny about learnt? I’m confused.
Grok – It has a G at the beginning, it embodies the notion of understanding, it symbolizes taking in large amounts of info, large amounts of info can make one’s ego grow exponentially or It could be copyrighted, but who reads books
Gook(s) = Google Books
“Pfuw” = /fuhw/
Like Pfafftown, only more hayseed and less anunciation.
Todd
eNuff
Add a tilde and get ~eNuff (“not enough” in boolean) So cute it makes my teeth hurt.
_
nLit
Pronounced enlight.
Cheesy enough even for Google.
Pneumnem
Pronounced new-nem. Like the “pneu” from pneumatic and “mnem” from mnemonics.
Offhand I can’t think of worse name for Knol than the name they chose for themselves. But in the general annals of bad product names I’ll never forget the i.beat blaxx: http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/24/trekstor-showcases-i-beat-blaxx-portable-media-player/
- Wii
- ‘squirting’ in the Zune sense
- WinCE
The initial reaction to ‘Wii’ was, shall we say, less than kind. Hasn’t seemed to hurt sales, though. A good product can survive a weird name, which seems particularly relevant here.
‘Squirting’ is more a branded message or brand image than a brand name per se, but its rollout still has to rank as one of the great ‘what were they smoking?’ moments of 21st century marketing.
And I’ve always just gotten a chuckle out of ‘WinCE’.
Palringo.
Three that I made up for fun:
1) Gnarl
2) Qyou
3) Phyl
Here’s a new search engine for you:
Goghphor
(Go For)
Enough silent letters in there for you?
Great post! I take it you meant a brand that had actually launched.
One of my “favorites” was kozmo.com, one of those get-anything-in-an-hour urban delivery sites back in the late 90s.
You could never just say it when you recommended it to friends; you ALWAYS had to spell it afterwards. It was so annoying.
And they didn’t bother checking who owned cosmo.com, or kozmo.com or cozmo.com.
Ah, the bad ol’ days.
Staying with the “knowledge” theme, here’s one:
nozit
For extra points, you could prepend it with a silent “k”, but that would prevent it getting mistaken as an acne medication company.
While this is pronouncable (knows it), those words suffer the same fate of any elided sibilent – it can be on either word or on both.
ice cream = I scream
it’s not = it’s snot
Bo knows = Bono’s
But nozit.com could take off like the “Bo Knows” commercials, so it could actually be a great brand name. Maybe I need to take a trip to godaddy….
GOOL (pronounce CUIL)
Vaio
wtf.
For me, it has to be:
Me.com
That’s the most dreadful name I can imagine, and it’s been forced on me… almost. At least I can remain myself@mac.com, instead of having to accept myself@me.com.
But… Me.com… It makes me think of certain online services of years ago. Or even some still extant web gateways. Me, Me, Meeeee! Look at MY stuff. (Some of which remains surprisingly unconfigurable by ME. Hmmph)
It makes me feel as if I should be about 10 years old.
Uck.
Orkut… but someone already said that. Stickam? Xanga?
Thetus
1) Nollidge – in the tradition of Google, a misspelled version of “googol.” Pronoucable and dumb.
2) Breyn – same as above
“Rejaw” – some kind of new blogging service. It sounds really painful… “Sorry, but it looks like we’ll have to rejaw.”
AcipHex- When you pronounce it, it sounds like “ass effects” http://www.aciphex.com/
When my hubs and I heard this commercial, we both started laughing uncontrollably. Who on earth could have thought of such a terrible name???