We read:
"Google's Gmail trademark just suffered a severe blow in Europe as the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market has ruled against the search giant's use of the Gmail name there, according to the man who opposed the mark.
Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced that his company received a positive ruling last week from the Harmonization Office supporting his claim that "Gmail" and his own "G-mail" are confusingly similar. G-mail is a German service that provides a "gmail.de" email address, but also allows for a sort of "hybrid mail" system in which documents can be sent electronically, printed out by the company, and delivered in paper format to local addresses.
Giersch has been successful in German courts so far, which is why German users can't sign up for "gmail.com" accounts (they get "googlemail.com" instead).
Source
The objections to Gmail seem a bit childish to me. Probably an attempt to squeeze some money out of Google, I would think.
I can't see that it is going to bother Google much to use "googlemail" instead instead of "Gmail" but no thought seems to have been given to the extra time European users will have to spend typing out "googlemail" instead of "Gmail" when they send out emails to users of Google's services.
So I guess it really amounts to discrimination against Germans! They are made to spend more typing than we are for the same result! I think I rather like that! If German judges cannot look out for the interests of Germans, why should we care?
