By Dan Frommer. From the 
archives.
Friday, September 16, 2011 at 2:38 pm.
The creative naming habits of big web portals
Google is working on a Flipboard clone called “Propeller.” This is yet another example of a product from one of the big web portals having the same name as a product from another big web portal.
Kind of a surprise, given how creatively named “Google” and “Yahoo” seemed in the first place. But not really, given how uncreative the portals tend to be these days. Here’s a short matrix, which I’ll update as new offenses are committed.
| AOL | Yahoo | |||
| Buzz | — | — | Kind of a Twitter or Facebook clone, launched Feb. 2010 | Kind of a Digg clone, launched Feb. 2008 |
| Places | — | Kind of a Foursquare clone, launched Aug. 2010 | Kind of a Yelp clone, launched Apr. 2010 | — | Play | Music app for mobile, launched Mar. 2011 | — | Kind of an iTunes clone, launched Mar. 2012 | Music app for mobile, launched Jun. 2011 |
| Propeller | Kind of a Digg clone, launched Jun. 2006 as “Netscape,” renamed in 2007 | — | Kind of a Flipboard clone, launching 2011 | — |
Also: The most impressive thing about Yahoo is that it still exists
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