Android sounds technical, has baggage, and might be stale
*Interesting branding problem.
https://9to5google.com/2018/10/11/the-dirty-word-android-dead-made-by-google/
Android is the world’s most ubiquitous OS and one of the most important parts of Google’s business. But it’s becoming clearer that the company no longer wants the word associated with its phones. The latest evidence is in the transcript for its event this week in New York City.
“Android” wasn’t said a single time during the Made by Google 2018 keynote. It marks the first time ever that Google has held a public-facing hardware event like this — since the introduction of the operating system in 2008 — without at least mentioning it by name.
This isn’t the first we’ve seen of the Android brand slipping away. Google’s most important apps have also seen the Android name disappear over the last couple years. Android Pay was rebranded to Google Pay. “Android Messages” was renamed to just “Messages” on the Play Store sometime in the last several months (although it retains the Android name on the web). Google’s wearable OS Android Wear was rebranded to Wear OS.
That’s not to mention all the brands and products that Google has introduced in the last couple years that have left behind any mention of the OS, often in favor of the Google moniker itself. “Google One,” for its all-in-one cloud storage offering. “Google Tasks,” for its new task manager app. “Google Allo” and “Google Duo” for its latest attempts at Android messaging and video calling, respectively. Not everything is being rebranded as “Google” obviously, but it’s a popular substitute.(...)
So why has it disappeared from the name of so many apps? And why did the word go entirely unsaid for the first time during this week’s event? And why — as you can see — is chromeOS (apparently that’s the new formatting for that brand?) totally in the clear to get a spotlight while Android isn’t?
Google’s traditionally quiet about the reasoning behind its branding decisions, but we can make an educated guess.
Android sounds technical, has baggage, and might be stale
For one, there’s public perception. “Android phones” have a reputation of being cheaper and lower-quality than “iPhones” in popular culture, regardless of that being true for some but not all of them. Since the very beginning of the platform, one attractive aspect of Android phones as an alternative to the iPhone has been their oftentimes lower prices — or at least that those affordable models exist.
It’s understandable that, given the Android brand’s association with “lower quality” non-premium phones that Google doesn’t want to associate the name of that OS with its phones — at least not in terms of the public-facing marketing message. Android phones are made by dozens of scattered manufacturers, all with varying approaches to their products, their design, their features, etc. — which has lead to an arguably good thing: immense diversity of phones running Android today. But that means “Android” doesn’t really have much meaning other than just being not-iPhone.
Rather, Google has spent millions over the last few years building a brand around the word Pixel and the various aspects you might associate it with — most notably its stellar camera. Like the other “iPhone” and “Galaxy” brand names that are ubiquitously known in the smartphone space, Google wants to build one of its own. And it doesn’t want the baggage of the Android connotation mucking up the image of a phone that competes with the iPhone and costs upwards of $1,000....
