Google loses right to "Gmail" name in Germany

[lenseman]

Google loses right to \"Gmail\" name in Germany

Gmail users in Germany were likely surprised late last week when instead of gaining access to their email, they were greeted with a mysterious message from the folks at Google.

The plain text message, which started popping up sometime on Friday, reads, "We can't provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we're called Google Mail here instead. If you're traveling in Germany, you can access your mail at http://mail.google.com Oh, and we'd like to link the URL above, but we're not allowed to do that either - Bummer."

For the full article, see:

http://www.thelocal.de/12667/20080623/

 

[BrendanS]

Re: Google loses right to \"Gmail\" name in Germany

Same thing happened in the UK in 2005

 

[lenseman]

Re: Google loses right to \"Gmail\" name in Germany

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[curve]

Re: Google loses right to \"Gmail\" name in Germany

Why on earth didn't that bloke just sell the domain name for a large sum to Google?

 

[jeremyshaw]

Re: Google loses right to \"Gmail\" name in Germany

The difference is that in the UK you can still keep a gmail account if you had it early enough. I suspect that if you got a friend in the US to set it up for you it would be fine too. Otherwise it has to be googlemail.

I guess Google didn't research the copyright issues on the name gmail thoroughly enough.

 

[ean_p]

Re: Google loses right to \"Gmail\" name in Germany

thats not so as i opened a google mail account only 4 weeks ago and it can be addressed as either xxx@googlemail.com or xxx@gmail.com and they both come through to me as the same account. as such gmail here is just shorthand for googlemail.