By Paul Bradley
Where does blatant mimicry stop and similarity start?
It is very fair for Henry Ford to get upset if some nerd tries to register another car called FORD or AFFORD or even FOARD. He might get not quite so upset if they call it PORD or DORD but he has absolutely no reason or legal right at all if a budding car designer is set on calling his new car, with Spanish flavour, an ESPORD. It might imply similarity but no expert or even amateur car buyer is going to confuse it with dear old Henry's mass produced range.
However it seems that the youngsters at Google have developed a keen sense of paranoia to protect their new found wealth. They seem to think that everyone wants to be like them, to ape their financial success. Any name remotely google like is now a fair target for their enforcers.
We have been running spog.org for several years now, it stands for the Spanish Property Owners Guild. Our members call browsing our site "spoogling". (Short for Spanish Property ownership ogling) We provide expert advice to English speakers wanting to buy property in Spain or live or work here.
The membership are always on the look out for information about property in spain. They are very unhappy with the current way of searching, it simply takes too long. So they asked if we could find a precise, quicker and safer way of finding property to buy or rent over the internet. We looked but there was nothing so we decided to do it ourselves. This is why.
If you search generally using any major search engine for a "2 bed house in a specific location at a specific price" you get hundreds of thousands of results, yet if you search precisely you get no results. What our members and indeed all property seekers everywhere would prefer is a focused search engine that enables owners and agents to precisely market their property to buyers and renters who can find exactly what they want quickly and in a clutter free zone.
Make more money from your site traffic, on your terms. >> start here
So after much thought and research we came up with a design that seemed to solve the problem. Like all new business ideas the hardest part of implementation is what do you call it. We offered our members several alternatives which evolved into the name espOOgle. Someone said that it sounded a bit like google and that was the point it sounded a bit like google or froogle or doogle or poogle or indeed soogle but it was definitely not google. Owning the name google does not entitle you to control every single similar alphabetical variation of it. If one wants to control it, buy it it's how capitalism works.
Where does blatant mimicry stop and similarity start?
It is very fair for Henry Ford to get upset if some nerd tries to register another car called FORD or AFFORD or even FOARD. He might get not quite so upset if they call it PORD or DORD but he has absolutely no reason or legal right at all if a budding car designer is set on calling his new car, with Spanish flavour, an ESPORD. It might imply similarity but no expert or even amateur car buyer is going to confuse it with dear old Henry's mass produced range.
However it seems that the youngsters at Google have developed a keen sense of paranoia to protect their new found wealth. They seem to think that everyone wants to be like them, to ape their financial success. Any name remotely google like is now a fair target for their enforcers.
We have been running spog.org for several years now, it stands for the Spanish Property Owners Guild. Our members call browsing our site "spoogling". (Short for Spanish Property ownership ogling) We provide expert advice to English speakers wanting to buy property in Spain or live or work here.
The membership are always on the look out for information about property in spain. They are very unhappy with the current way of searching, it simply takes too long. So they asked if we could find a precise, quicker and safer way of finding property to buy or rent over the internet. We looked but there was nothing so we decided to do it ourselves. This is why.
If you search generally using any major search engine for a "2 bed house in a specific location at a specific price" you get hundreds of thousands of results, yet if you search precisely you get no results. What our members and indeed all property seekers everywhere would prefer is a focused search engine that enables owners and agents to precisely market their property to buyers and renters who can find exactly what they want quickly and in a clutter free zone.
Make more money from your site traffic, on your terms. >> start here
So after much thought and research we came up with a design that seemed to solve the problem. Like all new business ideas the hardest part of implementation is what do you call it. We offered our members several alternatives which evolved into the name espOOgle. Someone said that it sounded a bit like google and that was the point it sounded a bit like google or froogle or doogle or poogle or indeed soogle but it was definitely not google. Owning the name google does not entitle you to control every single similar alphabetical variation of it. If one wants to control it, buy it it's how capitalism works.
posted by Creditwrench at 6:51 AM
