--- title: "Tags or Labels? Which one do you prefer?" description: "

I read a this post on Niall Kennedy’s blog about the new features in the Google Toolbar which includes the ability to store and ~~tag~~ label bookmarks that can also later be retrieved when logging into a different machine.

While the concept is nice (and is similar in a number of ways to the del.icio.us extension for FireFox the thing that caught my eye was the fact that Google decided to call the tags labels.

" doc_version: "1" last_updated: "2017-06-02" date: 2006-01-30 tags: [Google, Google-Toolbar, Labels, Tags] canonical: "https://eran.sandler.co.il/2006/01/30/tags-or-labels-which-one-do-you-prefer/" --- ## Sitemap - [Home](https://eran.sandler.co.il/) I read a [**this post**][1] on [**Niall Kennedy’s blog**][2] about the new features in the [**Google Toolbar**][3] which includes the ability to store and ~~tag~~ label bookmarks that can also later be retrieved when logging into a different machine. While the concept is nice (and is similar in a number of ways to the [**del.icio.us**][4] extension for FireFox the thing that caught my eye was the fact that [**Google**][5] decided to call the tags labels. While they ([**Google**][5]) are very consistent with the naming issue (you also have labels in [**Gmail**][6]) why is the term “labels” was chosen over “tags”? Do they think that the term “labels” is easier to understand and explain to the common John Dow instead of “tags”? Did they do it just to set themselves apart from the whole “tagging” frenzy going on, or did they simply chose this term before the “tags” term went very public? Anyhow, I personally prefer “tags” over “labels”. When I say “labels” I always have a connotation of sticky notes on boxes. Which one do you prefer, Tags or Labels? [1]: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/01/google-bookmark.html [2]: http://www.niallkennedy.com/ [3]: http://toolbar.google.com/ [4]: http://del.icio.us/ [5]: http://www.google.com/ [6]: http://www.gmail.com/