Re: RE: Use of "googling" on zoe.nu

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 16:37:09 -0700, Timothy Cahill wrote:

> On Monday 14 June 2004 16:22, Rose Hagan wrote:
>> Dear Z,

>> Please note that we cannot accept your use of the phrase "Googling your
>> email" 

> Please note that we ( in the royal sense ) cannot accept your use of the 
> phrase "trademark infringement". We understand that you did not invent the 
> term "Google".
 
Actually, I think they DID invent the term Google.  It is based on the word googol, sometimes mispelled as gugol.  Googol represents the number 10^100.  The company Google, then used a sound-alike term intended to generate an association in the minds of their customers that they have A LOT of content.  This is a common practice, but as the recent legal case of Microsoft vs. Lindows, and earlier cases involving Apple show, basing a corporate trademark on an existing, widely used, word is on shakey ground when it comes to asserting trademark on that term.

> that you did not ask for nor receive permission from the 
> estate of the inventor of the term to use it as a trademark, and therefor 
> your claim to ownership of the word Google is immoral and brings shame upon 
> your search engine and its management. 

I think that since the words, googol and googolplex, were originally used in a scientific publication ('Mathematics and the Imagination' by Edward Kasner & James R. Newman) and was proposed for general use to describe these very large numbers, that there can be no claim to the copyright on these words.  Furthermore, they got the word googol from Kasner's, then nine year old, nephew Milton Sirotta, so, there shouldn't be any need to get permission from the Kasner estate.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol
      http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html
      http://info.linspire.com/lindows/


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   /  /  \/ / /\ Mark Crocker                        
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