Did Google’s mail service kill another product line?
Shane Smith, CEO of Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) claims that it did. According to Smith, “Google have made a monstrous mess of their intellectual property requirements around their GMail product.” IIIR apparently had another product called ‘GMail’ before Google did — and claims that Google improperly acquired the GMail trademark.
IIIR wants Google to change the name of its email service (although they are not going to try to lay claim to the gmail.com domain). Considering all of the branding that Google has put into this mark already though, they would more than likely just look for monetary damages against Google (the GMail trademark is apparently valued at between $48 and $64 million dollars — although one has to take that with a grain of salt, considering it’s the number that IIIR has come up with).
A drop in the bucket?
With about $11.2 billion in cash reserves, shelling out around 50 million bucks doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal. With Microsoft and Yahoo set up as its biggest competitors however, one wonders if Google $11.2 billion looks small in comparison — Microsoft has around $35-40 billion in cash sitting around (although one could argue that in 2003, Yahoo was only sitting on around $2 billion).
Google: the smallest giant.
While Google holds an extremely strong position in the search engine market, the uptake on its other offerings hasn’t really been phenomenal. Microsoft and Yahoo still pretty much hold onto around 70% of the webmail market at any given time, with GMail making up a rather insignificant proportion of that market compared to the big two providers. Even with new deals showing up for YouTube, Google’s still got a long way to go to beat out Microsoft and Yahoo in their dominance of just about every market.
Back to Google’s email situation.
Releasing a product globally is getting to be more and more of a tough game to play. Having to consider copyright implications in different countries makes things much more complex — and as the GMail case demonstrates, it’s difficult enough to get it right in your own country.
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March 5th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Thats terrible, I can’t help but feel like when you get big you attract the jackals, though I suppose if IIIR really did have a legitimate case then you wouldn’t want the little guy screwed over either. But really sometimes these things feel so arbitrary about who owns what words
March 5th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
It’s certainly a tough situation to sort out. Intellectual property is certainly bizarre sometimes — that 5 little letters arranged in a particular order can be worth around $50 million seems strange beyond belief. I certainly like to see companies and people get credit where it’s due, but as I understand it, in copyright cases, you also have to prove that there would be reasonable confusion between your product and someone else’s if they have the same name. I’m not sure if that’s the case here.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:48 am
I found the email marketshare statement from Michael was a little misleading because GMail was not open to public until last month.
March 7th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Good point Andy. It certainly raises the question of how a product beta stacks up against an established email service — and if it’s fair to even compare them at all.
March 15th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I hope they’ll fix that soon, just like what Apple did with the iPhone trademark.
There’s just too much at stake for Google to lose the gmail copyright name.
March 16th, 2007 at 8:43 am
I would imagine that from Google’s perspective, the cost of losing the trademark would be greater than the payout they would have to make to keep it — so I would imagine they’ll get it fixed as soon as possible.