Before Facebook became Meta, Google was BackRub, Amazon was Cadabra...

What is in a name? Well, a lot. Not only for people but also for businesses and brands. Perhaps that's why Mark Zuckerberg has renamed his scandal-hit parent company FaceBook as "Meta''. The renaming exercise has attracted a lot of social media and media glares, as expected.

Although Zuckerberg is not the first entrepreneur to rebrand or rename his business, critics feel that his move aims to distract attention from the series of controversies and court cases Facebook is currently facing.

Several international brands of today have changed their identities and even domains to overhaul their public image and boost their businesses.

Amazon was Cadabra 

The company was created as a result of what Jeff Bezos called his "regret minimization framework", which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for participating sooner in the Internet business boom during that time. 

On July 5, 1994, Bezos initially incorporated the company in Washington state with the name Cadabra, Inc. After a few months, he changed the name to Amazon.com, Inc, because a lawyer misheard its original name as "cadaver", which means a dead body.

As per the company history website, “After reading a report about the future of the Internet which projected annual Web commerce growth at 2,300%, Bezos created a list of 20 products that could be marketed online. He narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising products which included: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. Bezos finally decided that his new business would sell books online, due to the large worldwide demand for literature, the low price points for books, along with the huge number of titles available in print. Amazon was originally founded in Bezos’ garage in Bellevue, Washington.

Initially, Amazon only sold books, founder Jeff Bezos had a vision for the company's explosive growth and e-commerce domination. He knew from the very beginning, he wanted Amazon to be "an everything store." 

In its early days, the company operated out of the garage of Bezos's house in Washington. In September 1994, Bezos purchased the domain name relentless.com and briefly considered naming his online store Relentless, but friends told him the name sounded a bit weird. The domain is still owned by Bezos and still redirects to the retailer. 

Instagram was Burbn

Instagram didn't start out as Instagram. It started out as "Burbn."

As per an article published in the Atlantic, Kevin Systrom, the creativity researcher, was a fan of Kentucky whiskeys. 

So when he created a location-based iPhone app—one driven by the success of networking app Foursquare—he named it after the booze-Burbn. 

The app was complicated and Systrom kept tweaking it. After analysing how people were using it, he brought on another programmer, Mike Krieger; the duo used analytics to determine how exactly their customers were using Burbn. 

They realised that customers weren't using Burbn's check-in features at all. In fact, they were using the app's photo-sharing features. "They were posting and sharing photos like crazy," Sawyer notes.

After months of experimentation and prototyping—on October 12, 2010—Systrom and Krieger released a simple photo-sharing app. It was named not Burbn, but Instagram.

Zomato was Foodiebay

What initially started off as a food directory website known as Foodiebay in 2010 is currently recognised as one of the biggest food tech unicorns in India. After two successful years of Foodiebay, the company was rebranded as Zomato.

Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal and co-founder Pankaj Chaddah led Zomato to achieve the status of India’s first food tech unicorn. Currently valued at over $3 Bn, Zomato recently made headlines by acquiring a stake in Uber Eats. Many experts believe this move could give rise to a Zomato-Swiggy duopoly in India.

Google was BackRub

Initially launched as BackRub to focus on the link-back aspect, the tech giant’s name was later changed to Google. 

Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google is currently hailed as one of the most successful companies in the world, the rebranding of BackRub to Google aligns with the company’s entrance to new markets and several sub-brands. 

In December 2019, Google’s parent company Alphabet named Sundar Pichai as its CEO with both founders stepping away from day-to-day operations to join the board of directors.

Twitter was Odeo

The transition from Odeo to Twitter is hailed as the most legendary business rebranding in social media history. 

An entrepreneur named Noah Glass started the podcasting platform Odeo in his apartment in 2005. Glass' earliest investor was a former Google employee named Evan Williams. 

That was when Apple first announced iTunes would include a podcasting platform built into every one of the 200 million iPods Apple would eventually sell. 

The Odeo promoters realized that they needed to come up with another idea.

A member of Odeo team Jack Dorsey then presented an idea for a completely different product that revolved around "status" — what people were doing at the given time.

It was a system where you could send a text to one number and it would be broadcasted out to all of your friends: Twttr which eventually became Twitter which was launched in September 2006.