In Ireland the app went from being Hailo to MyTaxi to Free Now. Personally I loved Hailo. It became a verb and it was common to say "I'm going to Hailo now". Now it's "I'm going to FreeNow... now". It just doesn't sound as smooth. I still use it but I really feel like Hailo was the ideal name.

I mean yeah, that's not rebranding, that's just brand suicide. I hadn't heard about it, that's a fun story.

But in general, people used to a brand always cry out how rebranding will kill the brand and it truly has zero effect. I remember people saying that gmail's logo changing would kill it. Then it happened like two more times. Google rebranded Hangouts/Chat/Whatever like fifteen times and they still somehow have users. And in fintech I've seen tons of successful rebrands despite users doomsdaying them out. Simple, mentioned downthread, is a good example.

People just hate change. I mean look at some of the replies here… I hope they'll be able to read themselves a year from now.

> It's 2 years now with new name, but they iOS app is still named: FREE NOW (mytaxi)

On Android it's even more confusing. Some time ago it changed from "FREE NOW (mytaxi)" to "FREE NOW (Kapten)". At first I feared that they were undergoing another stupid rebranding (or tried to do one to Kapten and then went back on it and I missed that). Turns out that was a company they acquired from the UK, which I assume 90% of existing users never heard of before.