Polish Poets Threaten Google Supremacy!

Phil Butler,

on February 17, 2007,

Google has launched legal action once again, this time against a group of Polish Poets! How's that for coming down hard on the little guy? In the press release Google is evidently trying to get the money hungry, robber baron poets to give up their Internet domain name gmail.pl.

I don't see how Google stood for this type of piracy this long, but Izabela Krawcyz of GMAil - the “Grupa Mlodych Artstow I Literatow, ” or Group of Young Artists and Writers told AFP that Google has turned to the country's IT and telecommunications tribunal to attempt to stop them from using the address http://www.gmail.pl/.

Google says that GMAil has no rights to the name that resembles the US firm's internationally known mail service http://www.gmail.com/. The poet site is enjoying snowballing global success, which encouraged Google ( and the hoard of wanna be bean counters there) to try and snap up variants of the name that use suffixes like .pl in Poland. Krawczyk blasted the suggestion that the group is looking for a payoff from Google to buy the domain name back. Google obviously rather pay Polish lawyers more to get the domain I bet, than to actually pay poets anything for their domain terrorism (sheesh).

“We didn't buy this name just to sell it to Google. As a matter of pride, we're refusing to give it up,” she said.

Google's lawyers were not available for comment, but Krawczyk said Google has made no offer for financial settlement. Google has faced similar problems for failing to register local versions of its domain name in Britain and Germany.

I don't know about you guys but after I write this I am going to see if there is an organization in Poland called Young Anorexic Hotties On Oxycontin (Yahoo) or maybe Mostly Sadistic Nerds (MSN). Heck the major players may not have enough money to track down all the potential infractions. I bet Google uses an algorithm and a crawler to track down would be poets all over the globe. I wonder if I can get everyone with my name to have their's changed?

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8 Comments (Subscribe to rss)

Jorge - February 17, 2007 at 08:34 am PDT

Google should lose this one.

GMAiL is the acronym for Polish poets’ names, and that trumps any claim that Google has for trademark originating in another country, and which is not used in Poland.
Phil Butler - February 17, 2007 at 08:59 am PDT

Thanks Jorge, I agree that regardless of Google’s argument, the poets got to that domain specific first. I just thought it funny that Google would not think of the domains first. Did they not remember a whole country?
Joe Duck - February 17, 2007 at 12:04 pm PDT

The Polish Poets, silently
Sat on their small domain

Then mighty Google shouted
“ON YOUR PARADE, WE SHALL REIGN!”
Na zdrowie! Said the poets, raising high a glass of beer.

This ain’t no joke, solemny spoke, the Google legal tier.

“But we all think it’s funny”, said a thousand blogging fools

Get off your ass
Give them some cash
And call it all … just … cool
Phil Butler - February 17, 2007 at 02:16 pm PDT

Well said! I love creative people

Accosted by the high and mighty, distant panzers roaming again
The poetic little group laid huddled awaiting good news
Whilst apathetic-helpless mutterings stirred like drizzling rain

For fear of precedents, mighty Google readied the final blow
To render Poland even now a footstool to the steppes
Blitzkrieg over so little a thing, with 1000 lawyers in tow

For the sake of one ipod add, a creative license lost
Why not just ask, instead of take
And defray the legal costs!
Svetlana Gladkova - February 19, 2007 at 05:49 am PDT

Wow, such a poetry on the weekend Nice Monday surprise!

BTW, I have just found the website at http://www.gmail.ru provides free email services to Russian users (definitely not by Google). They actually have their own colorful logo, lots of ads and an announcement of Gmail.Ru being a registered trademark. I wonder when Google notices this one? And why they have not thought about two countries with two domains already?
lizardium - February 22, 2007 at 04:14 pm PDT

Whatever happened to the motto “Don’t Be Evil”?

Surely, this qualifies as evil behavior.

Google, you should be ashamed of yourself!
Cezary Okupski - May 03, 2007 at 04:02 pm PDT

Everyone, don’t be so quick attacking big bad Google Inc.!
gmail.pl was registered on 2006-11-01 (http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=gmail&tld=pl)
The Registrant tried to sell it on auctions the same month (2006-11-27): http://www.swistak.pl/aukcje/2406872

Only later they seem to come up with the suspected acronym.

This name - Grupa Młodych Artystów i Literatów (Group of Young Artists and Writers) - looks a little odd to me. I am not sure of its English version as my mother tongue is Polish, but writers is a subset of artists and it is like repeating. No other artistic organizations call them in this manner. The only similar I can think of is Związek Polskich Artystów Fotografików where there is artists-photographers rather than Artists and Photographers. If I were serious about the group I would call it Grupa Młodych Artystów.
Svetlana Gladkova - May 03, 2007 at 10:58 pm PDT

Cezary, you reserach really contributes a lot to our current knowledge about the issue, thank you vry much. I am especially impressed by the registration date for the domain and attempts to sell it in the very same month. It is not something we could expect a really existing community would want to do to its official WWW name.
And another big thank you for your insight on the Polish language and oddities with this acronym.

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