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| KitKat for Google? Give us a break… | KitKat for Google? Give us a break… |
| (10 days later) | |
| The name of the new version of Google's Android operating system has been announced. What an odd sentence that is. How sophisticated our civilisation has become! When one of our ancestors first paused for a moment to select a particularly sharp bit of rock with which to attempt to skin a mammoth, little did he, or she (that's saved me a letter), know where we'd all end up. | The name of the new version of Google's Android operating system has been announced. What an odd sentence that is. How sophisticated our civilisation has become! When one of our ancestors first paused for a moment to select a particularly sharp bit of rock with which to attempt to skin a mammoth, little did he, or she (that's saved me a letter), know where we'd all end up. |
| One day you're just restricting the roaming options of some goats using a bit of creeper, or working out which little bits of grit to stick in the ground for there to be cabbages in a few months' time, and then, within a cosmic twinkling of an eye, some people are earning their food and shelter by announcing the new name of the slightly altered version of a totally intangible thing. | One day you're just restricting the roaming options of some goats using a bit of creeper, or working out which little bits of grit to stick in the ground for there to be cabbages in a few months' time, and then, within a cosmic twinkling of an eye, some people are earning their food and shelter by announcing the new name of the slightly altered version of a totally intangible thing. |
| They don't actually make the totally intangible thing. They don't even alter the totally intangible thing themselves. Neither do they themselves think of the new name for this updated abstract noun. They just announce that new name. That's where it was heading, Ancestor Ug, when you first got a fire to light. You started a chain reaction which led inexorably to PR. | They don't actually make the totally intangible thing. They don't even alter the totally intangible thing themselves. Neither do they themselves think of the new name for this updated abstract noun. They just announce that new name. That's where it was heading, Ancestor Ug, when you first got a fire to light. You started a chain reaction which led inexorably to PR. |
| I'm not really a luddite. I haven't got the commitment or the physical strength to smash anything. I'm just a whinger really – so I know that we sort of do need operating systems. They may be intangible but they're not purposeless. They're much closer kin to a hand-axe than they are to a mission statement. Or a poem, for that matter. But I'm fairly sure that they don't really need names and, if you give them names, it doesn't really matter what those names are as long as they're different from one another – as long as you don't give two different versions of an operating system the same name. I think I just had an idea for the most boring farce ever written. | I'm not really a luddite. I haven't got the commitment or the physical strength to smash anything. I'm just a whinger really – so I know that we sort of do need operating systems. They may be intangible but they're not purposeless. They're much closer kin to a hand-axe than they are to a mission statement. Or a poem, for that matter. But I'm fairly sure that they don't really need names and, if you give them names, it doesn't really matter what those names are as long as they're different from one another – as long as you don't give two different versions of an operating system the same name. I think I just had an idea for the most boring farce ever written. |
| What I still haven't done, I realise, is told you the name of the new version of Google's Android operating system. I'm slightly tempted not to. After all, if you're properly interested in that sort of thing then a) you probably already know its name and b) there's something wrong with you. | What I still haven't done, I realise, is told you the name of the new version of Google's Android operating system. I'm slightly tempted not to. After all, if you're properly interested in that sort of thing then a) you probably already know its name and b) there's something wrong with you. |
| But I will. It's called KitKat. That's not a coincidence. It's deliberately named after the chocolate bar. Apparently Nestlé is fine with that. It's not sponsorship – it hasn't paid for the name of its product to be written on this thing you can't write on – but the company has allowed it. "This is not a money-changing-hands kind of deal," explained John Lagerling, director of Android global partnerships. | But I will. It's called KitKat. That's not a coincidence. It's deliberately named after the chocolate bar. Apparently Nestlé is fine with that. It's not sponsorship – it hasn't paid for the name of its product to be written on this thing you can't write on – but the company has allowed it. "This is not a money-changing-hands kind of deal," explained John Lagerling, director of Android global partnerships. |
| That's quite unusual. When A's label is sported by B, one of A or B is almost always charging to offset the reputational cost. The Premier League must reckon that the money Barclays pays adequately compensates it for being publicly associated with a discredited bank. Conversely, clothes designers wouldn't consent to their names being plastered all over so many of the world's most vain and stupid people unless they'd been lavishly remunerated first. | That's quite unusual. When A's label is sported by B, one of A or B is almost always charging to offset the reputational cost. The Premier League must reckon that the money Barclays pays adequately compensates it for being publicly associated with a discredited bank. Conversely, clothes designers wouldn't consent to their names being plastered all over so many of the world's most vain and stupid people unless they'd been lavishly remunerated first. |
| But for Google and Nestlé, there's no dowry. This genuinely seems to be a love match. Admittedly, Google's options were limited: every version of the operating system has been named after some sort of cake or sugary snack (unbranded ones up to now). The company has been moving through the alphabet, starting at cupcake and had got as far as jelly bean. So it needed an edible treat beginning with K and went off its first idea: "We realised that very few people actually know the taste of a key lime pie," lamented Lagerling. | But for Google and Nestlé, there's no dowry. This genuinely seems to be a love match. Admittedly, Google's options were limited: every version of the operating system has been named after some sort of cake or sugary snack (unbranded ones up to now). The company has been moving through the alphabet, starting at cupcake and had got as far as jelly bean. So it needed an edible treat beginning with K and went off its first idea: "We realised that very few people actually know the taste of a key lime pie," lamented Lagerling. |
| So KitKat really hit the spot. I'm familiar with the feeling. Sometimes I wonder how dastardly a third world scam Nestlé would need to pull to make me consider buying a Biscuit Boost. Still, Google's decision is surprising. It aspires to be squeaky-clean. As aspirations go, it's not been looking particularly realistic of late as the corporation's tax avoidance has become more evident, but it's still a company that tries to generate a wholesome, quirky, Californian vibe. That's why it called an operating system Cupcake. That's why its offices are full of free snacks for employees. There's still a faint echo of "Don't Be Evil" in the think spaces and mood rooms, albeit with an irritating interrogative inflection. | So KitKat really hit the spot. I'm familiar with the feeling. Sometimes I wonder how dastardly a third world scam Nestlé would need to pull to make me consider buying a Biscuit Boost. Still, Google's decision is surprising. It aspires to be squeaky-clean. As aspirations go, it's not been looking particularly realistic of late as the corporation's tax avoidance has become more evident, but it's still a company that tries to generate a wholesome, quirky, Californian vibe. That's why it called an operating system Cupcake. That's why its offices are full of free snacks for employees. There's still a faint echo of "Don't Be Evil" in the think spaces and mood rooms, albeit with an irritating interrogative inflection. |
| So it's odd that it would voluntarily couple one of its products with that of a company with a shameful history of wringing money from the poorest people on earth. To my mind, the risks involved in that association outweigh the fact that more people have heard of a KitKat than a key lime pie. I don't think the people at Google are doing anything wrong by using KitKat's name – they're not the ones peddling powdered milk in the developing world – but I don't understand why they've done it. | So it's odd that it would voluntarily couple one of its products with that of a company with a shameful history of wringing money from the poorest people on earth. To my mind, the risks involved in that association outweigh the fact that more people have heard of a KitKat than a key lime pie. I don't think the people at Google are doing anything wrong by using KitKat's name – they're not the ones peddling powdered milk in the developing world – but I don't understand why they've done it. |
| Then again, I don't understand much about them. These are people who equate a new operating system for a smartphone with a lovely cake. To me, that makes about as much sense as naming cancers after Beatrix Potter characters. Apple's equivalent system seems to be based on feline predators – Puma, Tiger, Leopard, etc – which makes slightly more sense because of the feelings of hostility and fear that every new stage of corporate tinkering with how a computer works evokes in me. | Then again, I don't understand much about them. These are people who equate a new operating system for a smartphone with a lovely cake. To me, that makes about as much sense as naming cancers after Beatrix Potter characters. Apple's equivalent system seems to be based on feline predators – Puma, Tiger, Leopard, etc – which makes slightly more sense because of the feelings of hostility and fear that every new stage of corporate tinkering with how a computer works evokes in me. |
| But if a simple numbering or lettering system is too unwacky for either corporation to countenance, might not a series of painful chronic illnesses be more appropriate? That would conjure up the endless spirit-sapping tedium of staring at a screen, and trying to make it do things, much more effectively than a pussy or a bun. Sciatica, Arthritis, Crohn's disease or – and maybe this is what the list of Android names is building up to – Type 2 Diabetes. (But why didn't they think of a new name when the second type came out?) | But if a simple numbering or lettering system is too unwacky for either corporation to countenance, might not a series of painful chronic illnesses be more appropriate? That would conjure up the endless spirit-sapping tedium of staring at a screen, and trying to make it do things, much more effectively than a pussy or a bun. Sciatica, Arthritis, Crohn's disease or – and maybe this is what the list of Android names is building up to – Type 2 Diabetes. (But why didn't they think of a new name when the second type came out?) |
| It remains to be seen how the Google-KitKat reputational trade-off will work out. Will association with the tedious smartphone millstones round all of our necks damage the KitKat's biscuity allure more than its parent company's immoral African marketing strategy? Will Google's cosying up to the cold Swiss giant piss the public off more or less than its deft accounting? | It remains to be seen how the Google-KitKat reputational trade-off will work out. Will association with the tedious smartphone millstones round all of our necks damage the KitKat's biscuity allure more than its parent company's immoral African marketing strategy? Will Google's cosying up to the cold Swiss giant piss the public off more or less than its deft accounting? |
| Is this, for Google, a public embrace of moral ambiguity? The world is harsh and complex, it's saying. Nothing is certain – except possibly death, but certainly not taxes. Evil is in the eye of the beholder. And there aren't many sweets that begin with K. | Is this, for Google, a public embrace of moral ambiguity? The world is harsh and complex, it's saying. Nothing is certain – except possibly death, but certainly not taxes. Evil is in the eye of the beholder. And there aren't many sweets that begin with K. |
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