Gadgetory

by now you've probably heard that the new logo for Airbnb looks like a master class in Freudian interpretation but a company logo doesn't have to be anatomically correct to qualify as a bad idea in fact Silicon Valley has a rich history of bad logo design and some of the biggest names in the business are guilty of it I'm Donald Bell and in this top five I'll count down some of the worst logos in tech starting off at number five Firefox before the name and the logo evolved into that cuddly world encircling one we know today Mozilla has to take a few stabs at this one the project was originally named Phoenix until a trademark dispute forced them to change that the Firebird both names were accompanied by an image of what I can best describe as a flaming goose being cooked alive in the fires of hell fortunately another tech company already had the claim to Firebird forcing the change to the Firefox we noted a high number for Facebook back in the day the Facebook logo was often accompanied by an actual face this guy he was like the soccer version of MySpace tom legend has it that the face was actually a manipulated image of Al Pacino but there's some compelling evidence that it was actually Peter wolf lead singer from the Jay geils Band either way it's really creepy but then again so is Facebook coming in at number three Apple computers for a company that now has one of the most iconic logos in the world their first attempts look like an engraving from a Charles Dickens novel can you imagine this thing being put on the back of an iPhone I mean on the plus side Apple would have to make the phone bigger just make the logo readable but then you just know Samson would come along and make a phone with more cross hatches and enhanced historical obscurity at number two Google yes the company that is quickly taking over the world and harvesting your information to sell it to the highest bidder is a case study on how subtle design changes make a big difference the early logo while virtually identical the name of an illegitimate Clown College but you redesigned the font and you drop the drop shadow and suddenly you're worth billions finally my vote for the number one worst tech company logo Nokia now to be fair this logo probably made a lot more sense when the company was founded in 1865 and their best selling product was rubber galoshes and let's not forget the people of Finland do love their fish but even so I'm sure you could not have found an uglier fish it's like half logo half nightmare it looks like it should have the Millenium Falcon flying out of its mouth so there you go five tech brands that proved that the air BnB logo is in good company honestly I'd kind of like a t-shirt for every one of these more top five top five cnet.com I'm Donnell Bell thanks for watching