Keeping Track of Rockets
May 23, 2015
I have an Overflight for AeroText, which is located at 77 Fourth Avenue, in Waltham, Massachusetts. The company offers a search system. I noted that Rocket Software is located at 77 4th Avenue in Waltham, Massachusetts. Ergo: AeroText is now Rocket Software.
What makes this interesting to me is that Overflight snagged a number of references to a software component causing some consternation. I ran a query for “rocket search” on the GOOG and noted these results:
What jumps out is that there are no links to the Waltham-based outfit and there are quite a few links to information about removing what one outfit (ScarebearSoftware) called a virus. The software in question is “Rocket Search.”
My point is that vendors of search and content processing software have to name their products so that individuals interested in legitimate content processing systems can actually find the company.
In the past, I have commented about Brainware being usurped by an outfit keen to pump YouTube videos out with corresponding erosion of the Brainware “brand.” Brainware is not part of Lexmark, and I don’t think too many folks remember Brainware, trigrams, and the convoluted history of the company. Thunderstone in Cleveland has suffered a similar fate. Thunderstone is for all intents and purposes now associated with games, not search. And there are other examples.
The most recent instance of a vendor losing control of a brand was, until now, Smartlogic. An outfit in Baltimore has encroached on the conceptual real estate and Smartlogic’s Semaphore product name is now lovingly gazed upon by a German outfit with a variant of Smartlogic’s product moniker Semafora at http://www.semafora-systems.com/en/.
Now Rocket Software, a company eager to become a mover and shaker in search, faces the malware and virus association.
How does one remediate this problem. First, vendors have to pay attention to the name itself. Second, search vendors have to protect their “semantic real estate.” Third, search vendors have to communicate meaningful, high value information.
Ignoring these suggestions leads to brand erosion. Who can license a product if it cannot be found in Bing, Google, or Yandex? Augmentext can help remediate this type of problem, but it is easier and cheaper to head off invisibility and confusion before they gallop through the indexes churning up semantic mud.
I assume it is difficult to see a path forward when there is spatter on one’s eye glasses.
Stephen E Arnold, May 23, 2015
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