Anonymous
07/10/05 03:50 PM
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I just want to warn that someday Google could decide to force this site (and other places like "Google Sighseeing") to remove "Google" from the site name since this name is trademarked. Google could argue that the placement of "Google" in the site name suggests that these are services provided by Google and so Google is responsible for them.
I just want to warn before someone gets into trouble with them. Nowadays companies very easely sue others (also because some lawers want to provit from that because they get easy money from large companies doing so).
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TexasAndroid
07/10/05 06:41 PM
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Google has already shown, in part, how they are likely to handle this. They sent one of the most polite Cease and Desist letters I've ever seen to the site that was letting you build wallpapers out of maps links. The key difference was that the wallpaper site was doing things for a profit directly off of Google's works.
Google earned a lot of good will on slashdot and similar sites for how politely they handled the situation. No sudden lawsuit. No viscious letter from a lawyer. But a polite letter requesting the site stop what it was doing. There were definite hints that lawyers would get involved if things did not change (which they did), but overall very cleanly handled.
So I would hope that if they decide to have problems with us, we'll get the same level of handling. And if all they have problem with is the name, then a new site name would be a hassle, but would be far from a cripling blow to the site.
Besides, we're sending traffic directly to them. And Google has made it fairly obvious that they plan to sell advertising on Google Maps at some point. That's how they plan to profit from the whole thing. So in a way we are, at some point in the future, going to funneling people directly at Google's advertising. And I say more power to them for it.
So I'm content with how things currently stand. If Google wants to have a problem with the site name, we'll deal with that when it happens.
TexasAndroid
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
Edited by TexasAndroid (07/10/05 07:04 PM)
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Anonymous
07/10/05 06:56 PM
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Maybe you're on the save side if you state "This site is not in any way affiliated with Google" somewhere easily spotted.
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Blue_Scapegoat
07/10/05 07:49 PM
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He's right, the people at google are very nice. I doubt they have a problem with it, because it is indeed getting people to their site and this site is non-profit. Even if they attempted to sue, I don't think they'd win, because this is non-profit. The worse that could happen would be a court order for a name change. But I don't think google would ever do that to a community that supports them such as us.
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nic
07/11/05 01:55 AM
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Well, I hope we won't have a problem. If we do, I'll change the name of the site, simple as that. I hope Google can see that we're only bringing more attention to their service, not hurting their image in any way.
I've added disclaimer text to the front page and footer.
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killermonkey
07/28/05 06:22 PM
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I like google, google's cool. Like T. A. said this s helping google, not leeching profits off them, so we should be fine.
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