23andMe
Logo of 23andMe.com
This will be sure.ly an interesting case.
Firm 23andMe.com founded by Anne Wojcicki (the wife of Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google) and Linda Avey offers people services of analysing and comparing their genomes (made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, hence the name). Google is an investor in this venture, although Mr Brin has rescued himself from the decisions about it. Both Mr Brin and Ms Wojcicki are quite the technical and marketing pair, indeed.
However on the legal ground neither of the companies played it hard. Last summer, Google has lost its case in Germany, where it cannot use Gmail (owned by gmail.de) and is forced to go under name "Google Mail". In Ukraine, it has to host on google.com.ua, while google.ua (owned by Gou Ogle Ltd - ТзОВ ГОУ ОГЛЕ) is forwared to kohaymos.com (let's-make-love.com in Ukrainian).
Logo used by 23and.Me
Now another German entity, this time Kemper Media, registered 23and.Me and is promoting similar services to those of 23andMe.com. On one of its pages, it even refers to the latter [ http://23and.me/dna-googles23-and-me.html ] completely confusing the user whether or not he or she is on the right site to submit his or her DNA.
Domain wise, this case is not a complete mess. Ms Wojcicki managed to secure most TLDs. However, 23-and.Me is still available and 23andMe.mobi was registered by Andrew Ayton (currently parked at GoDaddy).
Interestingly, Google's Page Rank for 23andMe.com is undefined, while for 23and.Me it is already 2.
Certain.ly, we will hear more on this case in 2009.
Sources:
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Copy - http://links2.me/~r0O$4H
January 8th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Google is not really into lawsuits. It seems that it’s best strategy is to defend then to attack. Just look on the recent cases on Yahoo, YouTube, Gmail.de etc… they always hide behind the fence.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Amazing that they didn’t snatch the other extensions… it is unclear in reading, are they currently in a lawsuit? It’s interesting to see how quickly so many of the .me investors are getting their sites developed and SEO’d, my hat is off to them!
January 8th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Google already rules the world without suing every joe schmoe!
And we all love them for this. A nice proof you don’t have to be a bad cop to make good bucks.
May 10th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Google also missed you-tube.com.ua (a porno site) and youtube.com.ua (just squated).
February 10th, 2010 at 7:36 am
Just checked the site 23and.me – now it has a big banner “Domain for sale (zu verkaufen)”
August 21st, 2010 at 11:22 pm
Just for the record: many …andme.com’s are taken.
E.g.: http://www.madameandme.com/
February 9th, 2011 at 12:37 am
More on google.ua case: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=&q=%22google.ua%22+%22google.com.ua%22+kohaymos&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGLL_en-GBGB394GB396&ie=UTF-8#sclient=psy&hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_en-GBGB394GB396&q=google.ua+google.com.ua+kohaymos.com+oleg+bogatov&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=936e6caec063a38d
April 1st, 2011 at 9:20 pm
You should also check googl.es – it forwards to an adult dating site.
Recently Facabook became more aggressive and turned many of those typos into its portfolio.
April 14th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
A propos, did you know that mgmail.com redirects to amazon.com?
Though it has nothing to do with amazon per se:
April 27th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
Google did nothing about goole.com for years. It is simple uses the ask.com engine…
July 27th, 2016 at 10:33 am
It took them about seven years and now 23andme ha won an UDRP on the domain 23and.me as the panel took into account the right and the left sides of the domain name. Here is the reference to the decision. http://www.adrforum.com/domaindecisions/1681113.htm
The original site is down and it is currently resolves in a standard GoDaddy parking page.
Shame them even don’t use it properly. Hopefully soon.
November 26th, 2016 at 10:35 pm
Worth noting that they did buy 23andme.ca in January 2014 for $ 1,500.00 USD via AfterNIC/GoDaddy (source: DNSal.es). Many more are left to run other sites, e.g., 23andme.me.