"Google has dropped the Gmail name for its e-mail service in the UK following a long-running row with a small British company that has claimed the rights to the trademark. [...] From today new users of Google's e-mail service will get an @googlemail.com address. Those that have already signed up will keep their @gmail.com addresses."
This is a blow to Google, because the name Gmail has become almost as synonymous with web email as Skype with Internet telephony.
I wonder if the 'G' brand of products is being re-thought? ;-) Google has already purchased these domains:
Gbrowser.com
Gbrowser.net
Gbrowser.org
Gcalendar.com
Gchat.biz
Gchat.us
Gdrive.com
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Curious. If it's a "small British company" then they have no comeback whatsoever.
As I note in my blog at http://james.cridland.net/blog/2005/10/gmail-is-now-google-mail.html there are TWO pretenders to the Gmail trademark in the UK - a German company, and a UK one. The UK claim only goes back to the 3rd April 2004, crucially two days AFTER the Gmail service launched.
Posted by: James Cridland | October 19, 2005 3:18 AM
Here's the worst part: they can't guarantee that uk-based @gmail addresses will continue to work in the future. From the Google site:
"What if I'm a UK user who already has a Gmail address? Will that address ever change?
Unfortunately, we don't know. We would love to say that your address will always remain the same. But the trademark issue is still unsettled, and unfortunately, we cannot predict what the other party or the courts might do here. You can always use your same username with an @googlemail.com address to avoid this issue later on. But trust that we will do the best we can to make sure your email address won't ever have to change."
Posted by: PeterCashmore | October 19, 2005 8:37 AM
I'm in the UK. I happened to need a new gmail account for a project yesterday, and got a googlemail account instead.
So I decided to grab my firstname.surname account in the googlemail namespace (because you never know if there's another Laurence Timms out there waiting to swoop...)
Interestingly Google told me that it wasn't available. I'm guessing that Google have locked down any googlemail mailboxes that are already taken in the gmail namespace.
Posted by: laurence timms | October 20, 2005 2:37 AM