Warner Bros. discovers that it has changed the name of its streaming service again.

You will never guess what its executives have come up with.

Initially, the service was launched in 2020 with HBO Max.

In 2023, the company controversially changed its streaming service to Max, throwing away the most respected online brand names in TV to favor the most popular names of male dogs.

David Zaslav, president and CEO of WBD, said in a company's pre-speaking New York speech at Madison Square Garden in New York that the name will be changed again… back to HBO Max.

“The strong growth we’re seeing in global streaming services is built around the quality of programming,” Zaslav said. “Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality media, to further accelerate growth in the coming years.”

Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content Casey Bloys said: “Through the courses we are doing and the strong motivation we enjoy, we believe HBO Max is better representing our current consumer proposition. It clearly shows the implicit commitment we are deemed unique to deliver content and to steal the line we always say on HBO, we are worth paying, worth paying.”

The company further explained the move in a statement, noting that — it sounds like a clear shot on industry leader Netflix — “This development has been affected by changes in consumer demand, and today no consumers say they want more content, but most consumers want them to want better content. The quality and debris of WBD are both higher than other services than 50 years old.

Continuing: “Returning the HBO brand to HBO Max will further move the service forward and expand the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the product. This also demonstrates WBD’s willingness to boldly iterate its strategies and approaches – relying heavily on consumer data and insights to achieve success.”

If you recall the early efforts to bring HBO content to streaming, the history of streaming services is actually more tangled, as HBO Max replaced the SVOD service called HBO Now and a nascent streaming service for cable subscribers called HBO GO. So, in a sense, the demand for watching companies has shifted from HBO to HBO, to HBO Max to Max to HBO Max.

Realizing the humor inherent in this situation, Warners’ announcement news package includes a meme FriendsRoss famously declared: "We are resting!"

Here is the new logo:

The move came after last week's framework for its streaming business as its growth engine in its first-quarter 2025 earnings report, beating Wall Street expectations. The company has added 5.3 million subscribers to 122.3 million, and has increased streaming revenue by 8% to $2.7 billion, and adjusted EBITDA to $339 million.

In earnings calls with analysts, Zaslav said the company will try to return to a lesser strategy than Netflix.

"The idea is, it's not much, it's a good thing we've determined," he said. "We're not going to flood this area. We want to tell the best stories and we want to use all the quality content over the years."

The move is a transition from a return in 2023, when Zaslav emphasized the breadth and depth of content after announcing Max in an interview with CNBC. “By increasing the amount of content on the platform – children’s content, family content, non-fiction content, food, family, the largest library of movies and TV – by placing content throughout the content, we believe the widest range of content available to us.”

Earlier this month, Bloys reviewed his previous name in an interview with Puck. “When you go back to AT and T’s first launch of HBO Max, put HBO in That The title is controversial,” he said. Friends In the TV Library “…the idea was that once you put HBO in the title, it would define everything on the platform.”

Continuing Bloys: "Even two years ago, we're still going to do something for everyone. Everyone wants to be the next Netflix, which is very expensive, and it's very expensive to do it... We've accepted and understood that most of our subscribers at this time will have Netflix, and they're going to have Amazon, and when someone puts the media diet together, we can subscribe to a lot of things... We're going to join the media diet. HBO programming, scripted drama, comedy, documentary, paid one (licensing window) movie, library movie, and Warner Bros. TV library, we browse all that data and show David that.

And, it seems that reverting to HBO Max is one of the results of these discussions.

Max will be officially changed to HBO Max sometime this summer.