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Google Under Fire For Calling Their Language "Go"

Posted by Soulskill on from the rename-it-to-proceed-with-caution dept.

Norsefire writes "Since releasing the 'Go' programming language on Tuesday, Google has been under fire for using the same name as another programming language that was first publicly documented in 2003. 'Go!' was created by Francis McCabe and Keith Clark. McCabe published a book about the language in 2007, and he is not happy. He told InformationWeek in an email: 'I do not have a trademark on my language. It was intended as a somewhat non-commercial language in the tradition of logic programming languages. It is in the tradition of languages like Prolog. In particular, my motivation was bringing some of the discipline of software engineering to logic programming.'"

6 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. Go! by sopssa · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's actually pretty funny Google itself didn't see this coming. Results in Google for go programming language are about the existing Go! language and the main developers book about it.

    In this case Google should really change the name since its been used in an existing programming language for years. But maybe they are:

    "We recently became aware of the Go! issue and are now looking into the matter further," a company spokesperson said in an e-mail.

    1. Re:Go! by malakai · · Score: 4, Informative

      He published in "Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence" and it's cited in the ACM portal. Who cares what Wiki has or doesn't have.

      This wasn't some geocities page with talk about a language that was never developed.

      --
      -Malakai
      A Dragon Lives in my Garage
  2. Re:Goo by EyelessFade · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goo_(programming_language)

  3. Re:People! Punctuation is IMPORTANT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google's language is called Go! (with an exclamation mark.) The preexisting language whose existence has been suddenly and rudely revealed is called Go without the exclamation mark.

    Other way around. Google's language is "Go". McCabe's language is "Go!".

  4. Re:People! Punctuation is IMPORTANT! by Thornburg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dont get me started on the Japanese chess game Go.

    I don't know if your post was supposed to be either sarcastic or funny, but Go is neither Japanese nor chess.

    It's Chinese, and it's older than chess.

    The game commonly referred to as "Japanese chess" is Shogi.

  5. Re:'GO' != 'GO!' by umberto_soprano · · Score: 4, Informative

    A+ != A# != A# C != C# (in fairness they are related) There are several languages refereed to as D F != F# L != L# M != M4

    If you can't tell the difference between to similarly named programming languages perhaps programming isn't for you!

    But C# = Db F = E# and moreover B# = C