Google "Loses" Gmail in Europe

Hippie Hippie Shake writes to mention that Google has just lost the right to use the name 'Gmail' in Europe, according to the EU. "Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced that his company received a positive ruling last week from the Harmonization Office supporting his claim that "Gmail" and his own "G-mail" are confusingly similar. G-mail is a German service that provides a "gmail.de" email address, but also allows for a sort of "hybrid mail" system in which documents can be sent electronically, printed out by the company, and delivered in paper format to local addresses." It looks like "Google Mail" from here on out, at least in the Old Country."

Comments

The domain drives the branding.

[Kadin2048]

Well, they might rebrand it, but people are going to go nuts if they actually change the email addresses in other countries away from "gmail.com" ones; so regardless of whether it says "Google Mail" or "Gmail" at the top of the page, GMail is what most folks in English speaking countries are going to call it, I suspect.

Really, I think that Google is just going to wait a while, and then once the media coverage has disappeared, buy this guy's domain. Having "gmail.cc" for every other First World CC in the world except DE, just isn't going to fly; they need that domain, and now it's just going to be a lot of negotiation to work out a price.