Google gives up battle for Gmail name
Google yesterday gave up its long battle with a tiny company for the use of its Gmail branded email in Britain.
Following months of wrangling, the company with a market capitalisation of £31bn bowed to pressure from London-based Independent International Investment Research (IIIR), worth just £2.3m, and changed its name to Googlemail. Now new users of the search engine’s email will have to use @googlemail.com. The move ends the David and Goliath struggle between Google and the market minnow, which produces research on global equities and currencies.
By 1 April 2004, when Google launched Gmail worldwide, IIIR already had a web-based email service of its own called G-mail. Chief executive Shane Smith launched it in 2002. The subsequent complaint led to both parties claiming that they owned the brand. Negotiations over a financial settlement broke down in June.
Smith said: “We established the G-mail brand two years before Google, and that should be self-explanatory. We also applied for a trademark before Google.” The internet search engine, on the other hand, says the small company’s claims were “tenuous at best”.
Yesterday, Google caved in and said that it would shift to using the new name to “avoid any distraction to Google and our users”. This is not the first time Google has had to pull back its Gmail brand. Daniel Giersch, a German entrepreneur, owns the trademark of the Gmail brand in that country. Last May, a court in Hamburg ruled that the internet giant would have to change its email brand, and Google was forced to use Googlemail instead.
Smith said he could not understand why Google had changed the Gmail brand in Britain only, as he has filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office and with Ohim, the EU trademark office. Google claims that IIIR uses the G-mail brand only in Britain, which is why they have dropped Gmail in Britain only.
