Gmail trademark dispute settled in the UK

Google’s Googlemail email service is to revert back to its previous name Gmail in the UK after the search giants finally settled an ongoing trademark dispute.

Until the mid 00s, UK users called the service Gmail along with the rest of the world. But from October 19th 2005 until now it had to be renamed as another company had ties to the trademark. The .googlemail.com suffix was never much of success, partly because old .gmail.com addresses still continued to work. Today’s legal win means however that all UK users will soon have the choice between switching to .gmail.com addresses or keeping the .googlemail.com ones.

Always striving for efficiency, Google’s blog post on the matter raises a humorous point: “Since “gmail” is 50% fewer characters than “googlemail,” we estimate this name change will save approximately 60 million keystrokes a day. At about 217 microjoules per keystroke, that’s about the energy of 20 bonbons saved every day!”