Getting a company’s name right shouldn’t be that hard, but my employer, CNET Networks, seems to have some extra challenges there. The logo of CNET (one of the brands, not the company) is a lower-case c|net embedded in a bright red ball. Early on (1995 or so), CNET would write out the company name in the same manner: c|net: The Computer Network (that’s what CNET stood for, originally). Somewhere around 1998, everyone realized the external confusion putting a pipe in the name (not to mention the lower-case) was inflicting, so there was a brief change to CNet, followed in rapid order by the more useful move to CNET. However, in many cases, the damage had been done. I still see c|net linger on in several places, probably because the logo was never changed — which is a good thing, I think. Maybe in another 10 years it will be clearer to those outside the company. In a small way, the confusion is a legacy, too, of the company’s high-flyer status in the late 1990s. Many people’s first introduction to the brand probably coincided with the typographical indecision. Live and learn.