Don’t worry, Oath, stupidly named companies are worth billions
Apr 6, 2017, 10:06 AM
We got the news this week of another giant corporate merger involving some familiar Internet names. AOL and Yahoo will merge to become a new telecom company called Oath.
Of course, it wasn’t the merger that prompted comments, as much as the new company’s name.
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“‘It’s pretty funny,’ one person Tweeted, ‘don’t name your company after the sound made when people hit their head on the cabinet door,'” a reporter said.
It was all over Twitter and tech blogs as people poked fun at the name.
And then it dawns on you — how can anybody who uses the Internet make fun of company names? May I point out that every one of us, every day, with a straight face, uses a search engine called “Google.”
One of the most successful news aggregation websites is called the Drudge Report. What a downer. Who would read that? Besides the 18 million people a month who read it.
Before you dine out what do you do? You go to a website called Yelp.
Everything you buy online comes from a company named after a tribe of ruthless female warriors.
So, really, are we gonna make fun of a company called “Oath”?
Well at least this blogger finally concluded, no.
“I’m indifferent to it, like, I don’t really care,” a blogger from Tech Crunch wrote.
Maybe because he took a look at the name of the company he works for: Tech Crunch. Which, by the way, is owned by the company now called Oath.
Actually, the strangest thing about thinking it’s weird that Yahoo would merge into a company called “Oath” is the assumption that the word oath is somehow dumber than the word Yahoo.
Yahoo’s original name, by the way, was “David’s and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” which made it sound like it was run by an ice cream company.
David and Jerry are worth about $6 billion now, thanks to that stupid name.
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