How Popular Tech Companies Got Their Names

Ever wondered where some of the famous tech companies got their names from? What would have happened if Steve Jobs had named his company ‘Orange’ instead of ‘Apple’? Here is a list of how few of the popular tech companies got their names.

Apple

It was the favorite fruit of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who was three months late in filing the name for his company. He threatened to call his company Apple Computers, if the other colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 O’clock. This name helped Apple to distance itself from the other cold, unapproachable, complicated image created by other computers like IBM, DEC and Cincom.

Cisco

The company was founded in San Francisco by Len Bosack, Sandy Lerner, and Richard Triano. The name was derived from the name of the city,San Francisco. Thus, the company’s engineers insisted on using the lower case “cisco” in the early days.

Compaq

The company was founded in 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto–who were senior managers in a semiconductor manufacturer Texas Instruments. The name “COMPAQ” was said to be derived from “Compatibility and Quality”, but it was a name suggested by a name consulting company on several occasions–and it was the one which was not rejected.

Google

Sergey Brin and Larry Page had originally nicknamed their search engine “BackRub” as the system checked backlinks (any link received by a web node from another web node), to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, which originated from a misspelling of the word “googol” (the number one followed by one hundred zeros). The name was picked to signify the large quantities of information the search engine wanted to provide to the people.

Hotmail

Hotmail was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, and was commercially launched in 1996. The name ‘Hotmail’, was chosen out of many possibilities ending in ‘-mail’, as it included the letters HTML (the encoding language used by the World Wide Web). Thus, to emphasize it, the original type casing was “HoTMaiL”.

Hewlett Packard

The company was founded in Palo Alto, California by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Packard and Hewlett decided the name of the company (Packard-Hewlett or Hewlett-Packard) by tossing a coin, which Packard won. But, Packard decided to name the company “the Hewlett Packard Company“, and the company was incorporated in 1947.

Intel

Intel was founded in 1968 in Mountain View, California by Gordon E. Moore, Robert Noyce, and Arthur Rock. Moore and Noyce wanted to call the company “Moore Noyce”, but the name was a homophone for “More noise”. Noise in electronics refers to bad interference and is very undesirable. Hence, they used the name “NM Electronics” for almost a year before they finalized on “Integrated Electronics-’Intel’” for short. The name “Intel” was already trademarked by Intelco, a chain of hotels; thus, they had to buy the rights for the name.

Lotus

Lotus was founded in 1982 by Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs. The name was derived from ‘The Lotus Position’ or “Padmasana”, by Kapor, who was a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Thus, the name “Lotus” referred to the three ways the product could be used–as a spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manager.

Microsoft

Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates, who wanted to use a name to represent the company’s devotion to MICROcomputer SOFTware, and named the company “Micro-Soft”. The ‘-’ was later removed to form “Microsoft”.

Motorola

Victrola was an internal horn machine, designed by Eldridge R. Johnson, which was later acquired by its Canadian counterpart, BerlinerGramophone of Canada in 1924. William (Bill) Lear and Elmer Wavering–both employees of Galvin Manufacturing Company–developed the first practical car radio, which was named “Motorola” by Paul Galvin (the name is a combination of “motor” and “Victrola”). Paul Galvin purchased the patents to the automotive radio and acquired the rights to their trade name “Motorola”.

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The Worst Tech Mergers and Acquisitions of Recent Times

When companies opt for a merger or acquisition, the hope that they will enjoy benefits like larger market share, diversification of products and services, and increase in plant capacity.

However, many times executives face major problems after the deal is made. These include cultural clashes, different systems and processes, decline in shareholder’s value etc. Here are few deals of the 20th century, which backfired.

eBay‘s Acquisition of Skype

eBay–the site known for its online auctions, in the year 2005, bought Skype Technologies, an internet telephone startup for a whopping $2.6 billion, with a hope that online buyers would prefer PC-based voice calls to online auctions, thereby boosting communications and adding value to the company’s core operations.

But the customer’s reaction was totally opposite to what eBay had expected–eBay was a good online auction site, but nobody on eBay wanted to talk. For four years eBay tried its best to put its hyped propitious-acquisition to use, but had to end up selling Skype to private investors for a loss, for $1.9 billion. Skype was acquired by Microsoft in May 2011 for a staggering $8.5 billion.

Sprint and NEXTEL

In 2004, Sprint and NEXTEL announced their merger to form Sprint NEXTEL Corporation–in a hope to catch up with Verizon and AT&T, but due to tax reasons, the deal was transacted as purchase of NEXTEL communications by Sprint (Sprint purchased 50.1 percent of NEXTEL.) Both the companies had to face opposition to the merger from regional affiliates, who felt that the new company would violate non-compete agreements which the former companies had with the affiliates.

 As happens during a merger, problems started creeping in, with the top NEXTEL executives leaving the company after the closure of the merger, and only a handful of key NEXTEL executives remained two years after the merger. Many former NEXTEL middle and upper-level managers cites numerous reasons including cultural differences for leaving the new company.

Between 2008 and 2009, there were thousands of layoffs, losses worth billions, and plummeting in the value of the company’s stocks. In 2008, the company wrote down $29.7 billion of the $36 billion Sprint had paid to NEXTEL in 2005, which reflected the depreciation in NEXTEL’s goodwill since the date of the acquisition.

Lucent and Alcatel

It was rumored that Lucent’s strength in wireless business would compliment Alcatel’s global footprint and its prowess in fixed-line and broadband. Facing intense competition, the two decided to partner and form Alcatel-Lucent in 2006.

 But it couldn’t have been easy for either of the two, since Lucent–an offspring of the AT&T monopoly, it retained a common-and-control style–was hierarchical and centrally controlled; while Alcatel was entrepreneurial and flexible.

Since the merger, the deal has yielded malevolence, lost billions and is a threat to Pat Russo’s future as the CEO. Major cultural differences made this merger a disaster, Alcatel being a French company and Lucent being an American company, differences in time, language, and management styles, put this marriage between these tech giants into trouble since day one.

The $27.5 billion company has posted six quarterly losses and has more than $4.5 billion in writedowns. Also, the stocks have plummeted by around 50 percent. The company has reported a net loss of $554 million in 2010. Adding on to the current misery is the threat from Huawei (which has picked up its key customer Britain’s BT) in its traditionally strong fixed-broadband business.

AOL and Time Warner

The $360 billion merger, announced in January 2000, is one of the most significant corporate failures of the 20th century. Time Warner’s video, music and print, and its cable company would have rallied around AOL as the solution (making AOL synonymous with a national broadband network.)
Within months, the dot-com bubble left investors with billions in losses. Time Warner took up a dial-service just when Web surfers were switching to high-speed in masses. The companies found that it was more important to build a great platform which everyone would enjoy using–than to own–the content that would be distributed over it.

The value of AOL has dropped significantly from its $360 high. Its subscriber base has seen no significant growth since 2002. In September 2008, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced that Time Warner would split AOL’s internet access and advertising businesses into two, with the possibility of later selling the internet access division.

The reason for the failure is the fact that AOL and Time Warner were not able to encourage a climate within the companies to initiate the synergies that were proposed. A clear and concise strategy never emerged from the two companies. The two companies always seemed out of sync, witnessing massive job losses, dramatic departures of the executives and plummeting prices of the stocks.

In 2009, Time Warner finally set-off AOL, as an independent company. Today the combined values of the companies is about one-seventh of their worth in 2000. The merger destroyed more investor value than any single merger in the history.

News Corp and MySpace

At the time of its acquisition in 2005 by News Corp., MySpace was the leading social networking site, which could drive its traffic to News Corp. After the deal, it stopped innovating–becoming just another property in the Murdoch domain, while Facebook and Twitter continually launched new features to improve social-networking experience.

 The deal required MySpace to place even more ads to its already heavily advertised space, making the site slow, less flexible, and difficult to use. MySpace couldn’t experiment on its own, without forfeiting revenue, while Facebook was rolling out a new, clean site design. MySpace built everything in-house and was not deep enough in its product offering.

In 2009, MySpace underwent layoffs and management shakeups, and the users disliked interface tweaks. In June 2011, News Corp has sold off MySpace for $35 Million, far less than the $580 million News Corp paid for MySpace in 2005.

AOL and TechCrunch

In September 2010, at the San Francisco TechCrunch Disrupt Conference, AOL signed an agreement to acquire TechCrunch for $30 million, in order to further its overall strategy of providing premier online content.

The announcement would bolster AOL’s position as one of the world’s leading providers of high-quality, tech-oriented content. TechCrunch on the other hand was finding it hard to find talented engineers who wanted to work and how to keep them happy. AOL which runs the biggest blogging network in the world could fix the problem, and TechCrunch could focus on their engineering resources on higher end things.

Since the beginning AOL was aggressive about an important issue-the editorial. AOL allowed TechCrunch to freely criticize it, when they thought that AOL deserved the criticism. AOL had promised to give TechCrunch complete editorial independence, which the TechCrunch employees didn’t feel. Huffington had informed Arrington (founder of TechCrunch) that he would be an unpaid contributor rather than a paid writer, while AOL informed Arrington that he was no longer an AOL employee (he was also told that he would be an employee in the AOL Ventures division).

TechCrunch has proposed two options-reaffirmation of the editorial independence promised, i.e., autonomy from the Huffington Post and a blanket right to editorial self determination; or sell TechCrunch back to the original shareholder.

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Most Profitable Companies in America 2011

August 11, 2011 marked a great day of Apple when this large enterprise officially surpassed the “giant” oil U.S. Company named Exxon Mobil‘s to become the nation’s largest and most valuable enterprise with the market cap of $337 billion. Here is the list of American most profitable companies we assembled. Let’s take time to discover why they are on the list.

Criteria to estimate the value of a company based on factors such as fixed assets that companies own, earnings, and future business prospects. Along with Apple to be shortlisted top 10 American most valuable companies, there are a series of “giant” companies in technology field such as Google, Microsoft, IBM and AT & T.

Apple

Industry: Consumer electronics

Market cap: $337 billion

Current stock price: $363

Its stock has increased 125% in just two years. Currently, Apple’s profits every quarter are about $11 billion like Exxon Mobil’s

 

Exxon Mobil

Industry: Oil

Market cap: $330 billion

Current stock price: $68

Exxon is the world largest oil company, and in a good quarter, $10 billion in net income is the number this enterprise gains

 

Microsoft

Industry: Software

Market cap: $202 billion

Current stock price: $24

Microsoft was the No.1 Company a decade ago in terms of market cap but for 10 years, its stock seems to be fixed at 2001 levels

 

IBM

Industry: Technology

Market cap: $194 billion

Current stock price: $162

IBM has carried out its diversification of its traditional hardware business into services, software, and financing of customer purchases

 

Chevron

Industry: Oil

Market cap: $181 billion

Current stock price: $90

Chevron company landed the number five in this list by making $11 billion last quarter and has a huge cash balance

 

Google

Industry: Internet

Market cap: $177 billion

Current stock price: $549

Google Company still rules the search engine market in nearly three quarters of the U.S. and most of Europe

 

Wal-Mart

Industry: Retail

Market cap: $168 billion

Current stock price: $48

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer getting $415 billion and also the biggest single employer in the U.S.

 

Berkshire Hathaway

Industry: Conglomerate

Market cap: $169 billion

Current stock price: $67

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is placed the eighth position in this list

 

AT&T

Industry: Telecommunications

Market cap: $165 billion

Current stock price: $27

AT&T is one of the largest telecom companies in the world and also one of the most valuable enterprises in America

 

Procter & Gamble

Industry: Consumer products

Market cap: $163 billion

Current stock price: $58

The world’s largest consumer product company P&G expands its business in more than 100 nations with a large range of products: from razors to soap to skin care

 

 

Most Profitable Companies in America 2011: Procter & Gamble – Video Link