Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Google - Too Smart for Their Own Good?

Google makes a point of talking about all the smart engineers they hire but they don't talk about their smart business people. In fact, they've been criticized for not hiring enough businessy savy. A recent CNet Story showed the consequences.

While I working on my MBA, we identified two ultimate expressions of a brand. They are:

1) People voluntarily tatoo your brand on their body. Think Harley. Do folks with Harley tatoos buy Hondas? Not very often.

2) Your brand becomes a verb. Fed Ex this, Xerox that. There are very few brands that become a verb. Every time someone says Fed Ex this, it reinforces in people's mind that Fed Ex is the market leader.

According the the CNet Story, Google is sending out letters warning companies that "googling" something violates their trademark. Why would you not WANT your brand to become synonimous with web search? Do you really want the market to start saying "Yahoo!" this or "Ask.com" that when referring to web search? Apparently, I'm not smart enough to understand.

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