NewsGator is NOT “Gator”

Published on by Nick Bradbury

Shortly after I announced that NewsGator had acquired my company, I started seeing comments from people wondering whether NewsGator was related to the “Gator” spyware company (now known as “Claria”). The answer, of course, is NO (you don’t really think I’d join a spyware company, do you?).

NewsGator founder Greg Reinacker wrote about this problem a few months ago, and wondered whether a name change was in order to prevent the unintended association. But renaming a company isn’t the simplest thing to do, and even if the rename took place, people would still refer to us as “the former NewsGator company,” defeating the purpose.

Funny thing is, I had a similar post in my own blog last month, related to some people taking offense to the “demon” part of FeedDemon’s name. Given the problems with both names, I think it’s safe to say that if we ever rename the company, we won’t choose the name “GatorDemon” :)

12 thoughts on “NewsGator is NOT “Gator””

  2. What’s in a name?

    So this is the second time I’ve read a clarification posting that Newsgator, the RSS agregation company, is not, in fact, the reviled spyware company ‘Gator’. Apparently people don’t seem to get just because a business name…

  4. You should switch that around, Nick; nothing screams ultra-hip retro-kitsch like using the 50’s Z-grade horror name “DemonGator”.
    “Crawling from the depths… to feast on LIVING FEEDS!”

  6. an RSS-reader that lives in the sewer…. and grows and grows…
    hmm, the sewer part would have associations with the spyware ‘gator’ ;-)

  7. DemonGator – FeedGator – NewsDemon
    hummmm. They have ALL a better ring than ‘NewsGator’ anyway.

  10. Next they’ll be changing the alligators name to dis-assciate with the damn spyware b0770cks!

  11. don’t overreach yourself with similar spyware and non-spyware company names. you can always check if a name belongs to spyware on the anti-spyware site, providing spyware database.

Comments are closed.