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 thank freshbooks for sponsoring today's
video whether you own a business or do freelance work freshbooks is designed to
make accounting and invoicing easier for you with the ability to integrate with
over 100 different apps there's always a simple way for you to connect with your
team and clients it's easy to start and their award-winning support staff is
always there to help take out some of that unnecessary stress in your life and
start your first 30 days free with no credit card required go to
freshbooks.com techwiki the story of
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
for watching the video guys like it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked
it check out our other videos comment below with video suggestions and don't
forget to subscribe and follow It's Gonna Change Your Life okay
two easy steps