So Many Multi-National Corporations Confuse Customers by over-using a brand name they have developed with great effort and difficulty. The most prevalent
is perhaps the case of Microsoft. Microsoft uses Windows to brand many of its products and services. Some Microsoft Windows Related brands that come to
mind are Windows Live, Windows Azure, Windows Writer, and Windows Messenger.
Sometimes the cross-use of these brands makes sense. For instance it made sense when Microsoft changed the brand name on its Mobile Operating Systems to
Simply Windows Phone. But some of other Microsoft Brand Names such as Windows Live TV did not
click very well. One can argue people associate the Word Windows with Microsoft and thus naming anything
with the prefix Windows automatically sends a Message that the Product is a Microsoft Product. But unfortunately sometimes this causes confusion because
people try to see how this is actually related to Windows.
In Recent Years Google has also joined the Frey by using Chrome in Its Branding matrix. Most
people associate Chrome with Google Chrome the Web Browser. But because of the success of Chrome Brand, Google has started branding other products
such as ChromeOS, ChromeCast and ChromeBook with the Main Chrome Brand. It Of Course has some short-term benefits to use an existing brand
on New Products. I think it would have been more intuitive to call ChromeCast something else Like GoogleTV or Google Streamer or some kind of YouTube TV. I
am of course ignoring the fact that the prefix Google is simply not as cool as the prefix Chrome. Perhaps down the road Google plans for all these products
really to be one of the same. But for now These name simply confuse more than anything.