May
7

Gmail is back …


melindaplemel
By Melinda Plemel
Senior Receiver Relationship Manager
Email Intelligence Group

Back in the UK that is.

Recently Gmail won a legal dispute to get the name Gmail back to its rightful place … with Google.

According to the BBC, Google was not allowed to use the “gmail.com” domain in the UK because of a trademark dispute. A company called Independent International Investment Research claimed that it had been using the name “Gmail” since 2002, two years prior to Google’s launch of its email service.

This isn’t the first time that Google has been faced with the “Gmail” trademark issue. Germany, Poland, Russia and even the United States also had trademark wars, but finally Google was granted the Gmail trademark in 2007.

What does this mean for email marketers and publishers?

Going forward any new Gmail users in the UK will get an @gmail.com email address. Those users that currently have the @googlemail.com domain will be asked if they wish to upgrade to the new gmail.com domain, but this will not affect any settings or functionality of the accounts. Read more about this recent change on Google’s blog.

  • Radu.Prisacaru

    I really enjoyed this post. I have read over a few other posts you have up and I will say you do a great job of blogging. I will be looking for new post daily...Keep up the good work! I invite you to see my post, I hope you will find interesting too

  • Melinda_P

    That is interesting Andrew. I bet you were one of those few that made it in before Independent International Investment Research started to become really vocal on the issue. Would be interesting to dig into a bit more for some history.

  • When I signed up for Gmail in 2004/5 I was in the UK and got a gmail.com address, I wonder when the litigation started and googlemail.com was introduced for the UK.

blog comments powered by Disqus