**Note:** I call them "company name tags" here, and use "company tags" to refer to the bad ones.

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It's simple, we can just follow the rules from

[The Death of Meta Tags](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/)
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to decide which company name tags we keep and which company name tags we get rid off.

The rules of the above blog post are simple:

1. If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag.

2. If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it’s probably a meta-tag.

Although these rules are specifically tailored to tags like [tag:best-practices] we can tailor them to be rules about company name tags. Here's my take on it:

1. If the tag can't work as the only tag on a question, it's probably a company tag.

2. If the tag covers different products, it's probably a company tag.

Tags that are just about the company, are company tags, and aren't welcome.

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We have two kind of company name tags, those that surely cover multiple products (eg. [tag:apple]) and those that almost cover single products (eg. [tag:western-digital]) in the computers field.

The former are deemed company tags, simply because you can't ask a question about just Apple (rule 1) on Super User as it would be off-topic, the tag also covers a lot of products so it's more kind of a "group tag" than it is an "useful tag", similarly as to how [tag:best-practices] grouped tips. Hence, this company tag is of no use and should go; if you don't believe me, [read Daniel Beck's detailed answer](http://meta.superuser.com/a/2800/9666)...

The latter are rather useful, a question about Western Digital is most likely going to be a question about their hard disks or something closely related (RMA, firmware, ...) and it covers just a bit more than a single line of products, but nothing close as to the very wide branch of products Apple covers.

Western Digital hard-drive users surely will love a tag for that matter; however, I don't see how an *incomplete* Apple tag is going to be helpful in any way, as there's always a *more specific and more complete* tag to follow like [tag:macbook], and so on...

**The Death of Company Tags**

So, can we get rid of these company tags that just group other product (group) tags together?

<sub>For some tag it might be of a benifit to split them up into more specific tags, like [tag:razer-mouse], ... instead of [tag:razer].</sub>