“RU @ Gmail.ru”? I’d love to work in marketing for the newest domain squatters to hit the press. My bet is on that Gmail.ru is a target for aquisition either way, but now they’ll be a lot more expensive than the cost of a simple domain name registration. I’m not sure what the international copyright laws are for Gmail, but my guess is that Google will have a fight on their hands if they want to buy this one. Gmail.ru claims to be able to handle 10,000,000 users. Even if they can’t it sounds good.

Perhaps there is an interesting loophole there, where trademarks can be squatted on in countries that don’t adhear to trademark violations. It doesn’t sound like a great business to be in, but presumably Google would pay more than a few dollars for that trademark and to get the super dorky Gmail.ru logo off what they probably percieve as their domain (not that I’m in love with Google’s slighty fruity rainbow colors either, mind you). And rightfully so, this is pretty obviously a rip-off. You decide for yourself:

It’s the same story over and over again. If you have a big brand register your domain everywhere. Yes, it’s expensive to buy foreign domains, but if you are net-ing a billion a year I think you can shell out a $30k a year for all your domains to stop squatters.

Anyway, good job to the Gmail.ru crowd. Even if it might be a huge nightmare to deal with the legal battles ahead, I laughed out loud when I saw it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Random Security. You can leave a response as well.