there's no doubt that the familiar
bitten apple image has been an
incredibly effective part of Apple's
brand identity but why are they named
Apple in the first place and how about
these other Giants if you know anything
about the history of Apple you probably
know that Steve Jobs was kind of a
hippie and around the time of Apple's
formation he visited a commune in Oregon
where they grew you guessed it apples
and maybe some other stuff and it didn't
hurt the jobs was also on a fruitarian
diet at the time the name Apple also
sounded unintimidating and fun and jobs
liked it since choosing a name that
started with a meant they'd appeared
near the front of the phone book and
remember this is 1976 we're talking
about the other big a tech company
Amazon chose its name for similar
reasons minus the fruit commune stuff
Jeff Bezos originally named his company
Kadabra as in Abracadabra the Pokemon
but after someone misheard it as cadaver
and a friend suggested his alternative
idea of relent sounded too sinister
Bezos cracked open the dictionary and
picked Amazon because it would appear at
the top of many lists since it started
with a Bezos also liked the Exotic sound
of the name as well as the fact the
massive Amazon River could imply that he
had the world's largest selection of
books
Okay Google also got its name as a way
to suggest a large-scale project the
word Google had already existed and
means the number you get when you take a
one and write 100 zeros behind it Larry
Page and Sergey Brin liked the name
since Google was originally only a
search engine and they wanted their
brand message to be that you could use
Google to access huge amounts of
information they just changed the
spelling to something they liked better
speaking of liking something better
Facebook got its start because Mark
Zuckerberg was frustrated that the
administration at Harvard where he was a
student didn't offer an online version
of well
uh Facebook traditional Facebooks are
just printed directories given out of
colleges containing students photos and
a small amount of information to help
everyone get to know each other Facebook
the website was originally a more
detailed digitized version of a paper
Facebook that Zuck built because he
didn't have any faith in the Harvard
Administration to do it themselves and
if you've seen the movie The Social
Network you might remember that it
portrayed Napster founder Sean Parker
who later joined zuck's team as the
person who convinced him to drop the
from the facebook.com's original name of
course we'd be very remiss if we didn't
talk about the last member of the big
five and we'll do that right after we
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Microsoft's name might not seem that
interesting it's just derived from
microcomputer and software but did you
know they actually wrote the operating
system for the first successful home
personal computer it was called the
Altair 8800 and Microsoft's OS for it
called Altair basic was successful
enough for the fledgling company to make
a name for itself back in the late 1970s
as a software developer for smaller
systems larger mainframes and mini
computers were more common at the time
but after Microsoft struck a deal with
IBM to have their dos operating system
power the original IBM PC the rest was
history as they still led the way in
microcomputer os's thanks to Windows but
lest you think we're going to leave you
with just the origin stories of the big
five we have a bonus for those of you
that remember PC maker Gateway which hit
its Zenith in 2001 after shipping PCS in
those from familiar cow patterned boxes
all over the U.S but why did they use a
cow theme in the first place well
Gateway was actually formed in a
farmhouse in Sioux City Iowa and the cow
box wasn't just a reference to farm life
in the midwest but also that the
founders family had been in the cattle
trade for generations and at a time when
there were lots of low-cost PC
manufacturers cranking out systems that
suffered from quality and reliability
issues the homie Farm Motif made Gateway
seem approachable and trustworthy both
essential bovine qualities hey thanks
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