Google drops Gmail address in UK

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BananaBreadMuffin

BananaBreadMuffin

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Google drops Gmail address in UK 2005-10-19 16:55:36 Reply

Gmail, the free e-mail service run by internet search giant Google, will change its name for new UK users.

Following a trademark dispute the mail account will be renamed Google Mail.

London-based Independent International Investment Research says it started using the Gmail name for a web-mail application two years before Google.

Current UK users of Google's service will be unaffected, but a separate trademark dispute forced Google to drop the Gmail name in Germany in May.

Talks between both companies broke down several months ago, after they failed to agree a financial settlement.

Gmail v Google Mail

Google's Gmail e-mail account is free, comes with just over 2.6 Gigabyte of storage space and allows users to view their e-mail with all messages on a single subject linked together.

Google Mail logo
We want to avoid any distraction to Google and to our users
Nigel Jones, Google

In return, users have to live with the fact that Google's search engine analyses their e-mail and places small context-driven internet links next to their mail, some of which are paid-for adverts.

The service, launched on 1 April 2004, is officially still in "beta", a technical term to describe the test phase of a product.

In most countries Gmail accounts are available on an invitation-only basis, although existing Gmail users have been offered as many as 100 invitations to distribute to friends and family.

From Wednesday morning, new users in the UK signing up with the Google service will be given an e-mail address that ends with "@googlemail.com".

German users with this address report that e-mail sent to their username but ending with "@gmail.com" instead of "@googlemail.com" will still arrive at its destination.

ARTICLE CONTINUES ON WEBISTE.

Quite interesting. Doesn't affect you if you've already signed up, but if anyone in the UK makes a gmail account now, it'll be a name@googlemail.com account instead.