AOL Admits Naming Defeat

"America Online" no longer exists. The company has officially changed its name to "AOL", which is what everyone called it anyway. "America Online" was a poor choice of a brand name for several reasons, including:

• It's too long.
• It's too generic.

Abbreviations aren't the best brand names, either, but at least they tend to be short and less descriptive of the product or company.

AOL follows a long line of companies with long, generic names that never "took" in the marketplace:

IBM - International Business Machines
FedEx - Federal Express
AMD - Advanced Micro Devices
GM - General Motors

I'm not sure which of these companies have officially ditched their original, long names, but most people refer to them by their abbreviated names.

All of these companies have at one time experienced great success. But this success came in spite of, not because of, their long, generic brand names.