Bad enough: Google's initial public stock offering could be delayed under a possible Securities and Exchange Commission "cooling off" period, thanks to a Playboy interview with the company's co-founders hitting the stands right before the IPO. Now, the online search kings now risk losing trademark rights to the name of its Web-based e-mail service, Gmail.
This came about because three other parties filed for rights to the name between the day Google announced the service (April Fool's Day, as it happens) and the day they registered the trademark, six days later. Not that Google is necessarily worried. "We are confident in our right to use the trademark Gmail," Google spokesman Steve Langdon told reporters.
Or are they? Google mentioned the prospect of losing some trademarked for various products in the prospectus for its initial public stock offering, whose auction began August 13. Among the names Google said it could lose: some very familiar marques, like AdSense, AdWords, and even Blogger, the online blogging program Google bought recently.
"We have also been notified by third parties," said a Google filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, "that they believe features of certain of our products, including Google WebSearch, Google News and Google Image Search, violate their copyrights. Our unregistered trademarks include: AdSense, AdWords, Blogger, Froogle, Gmail, I'm Feeling Lucky and PageRank."
Google and Gmail haven't exactly been immune to problems since the service's April introduction. Alarms over whether Gmail violates user privacy by using content and text-scanning applications to send e-mailers advertisements provoked a California State Senate bill to ban content and text scanning of e-mail, a bill that passed that full upper house in May.
"We believe that Gmail violates California [law] which governs eavesdropping on confidential communications," said a letter to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer signed by four online privacy advocacy groups including the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "In light of California's heightened statutory and Constitutional privacy guarantees, we think it incumbent on the Office of the Attorney General to intervene to protect the integrity of individuals' e-mail communications."
That, in turn, provoked the libertarian Cato Institute's director of telecommunications studies, Adam Thierer, to fire off his own letter, accusing EPIC and their co-signers of becoming privacy absolutists who don't distinguish between actual government censorship and private businesses who don't force anyone to use their services.
Meanwhile, an auction to determine Google's initial stock price began as arranged August 13, in spite of Google having to file an amended SEC filing on the IPO to account for the Playboy interview with co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Google said in the amended filing they would fight any claim it violated federal law, but admitted a penalty potential if found guilty of doing just that.
"We do not believe that our involvement in the Playboy Magazine article constitutes a violation of Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933," said the amended filing. "However, if our involvement were held by a court to be in violation of the Securities Act of 1933, we could be required to repurchase the shares sold to purchasers in this offering at the original purchase price for a period of one year following the date of the violation."
All this seems to serve as bringing Google's IPO and perhaps its business style under further criticism. "As everyone knows, it is Google's two 30-something founders who are running the IPO circus," said fund manager Tom Taulli in a CNET.com critique. "True, their management techniques have been hugely successful for its search engine business--but these skills do not translate well to the tricky business of raising billions of dollars. This is something that should be left to the pros."
Wired was even sharper. The August 13 headline link to an article about the Playboy interview: "More Big Boobs For Playboy."
