RSSGoogle to Unveil 'iGoogle' Branding
By Nate Mook | Published April 30, 2007, 8:55 PM
Seemingly taking a page from Apple's naming playbook, Google on Tuesday will unwrap "iGoogle," a new brand for the search company's Personalized Homepage service. News features will arrive alongside the iGoogle site, including a "Gadget Maker" and location based search results.
Google's Personalized Homepage lets users create exactly that: a customized start page for their Web browsing. On the page, users can place "gadgets" containing information they are interested in, be it weather, stock feeds, news feeds from Web sites, and even the current date and time.
The iGoogle name isn't exactly new, as developers of the feature originally planned to name the service as such before the idea was shot down by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Instead, the service was relegated to more generic branding, but remained at the URL: google.com/ig.
Apparently, the surprise popularity of the feature and growth of competing personalized start pages such as NetVibes prompted Page and Brin to reconsider their decision. The company says tens of millions of users have created a personalized homepage, and the feature is growing faster than Google Maps and even Gmail.
In turn, iGoogle will be offered in 18 more countries, making for a total of 40 countries supported with 26 languages.
25,000 gadgets are currently available for the site, says Google, but the company on Tuesday will also release a Gadget Maker feature that will enable users to create their own gadgets without knowing HTML or JavaScript. Seven templates of gadgets will be provided, and users will be able to share their creations with others using the new "My Community" feature.
Moreover, Google is planning to offer users search results through iGoogle that are custom tailored to their physical location. The company is putting huge resources into collecting massive amounts of data on users in order to deliver results that are more likely to interest them. Google recently launched its Web History service that tracks and stores every Web page a user visits for future reference.
Well its all nice and all but it does not work. my page has not worked properly for a while and now i find it may be the browser that my vasity is usinng. :-(
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|I don't care what it is called, as long as i can still get the normal google.co.uk page, with just the normal search engine text entry, that is all I care about. Google to me is a good search engine and that is all I want from it. If I wanted the other crap I would use Yahoo.
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|iGoogle vs MyGoogle
What brand name do you like better iGoogle or MyGoogle?
http://blog.marketandmai...google-vs-mygoogle.html
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|Welcome back to the year 1998 folks...Maybe now we can get our Google in different colors? Bondi Blue Google anyone?. I think Eric s*** was spending too much time at Apple because now he thinks he's a iCEO.
Isn't that insanely great!
http://www.noheat.com
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|i is the new e
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|It won't be long before it's u or a.
o will be harder.
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|Except after C
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|Eh... Apple recently change their name from Apple Computers to Apple... So uhm.. Should it have been iApple? eh
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|Time to go purchase some iTems from the store.
[/homestar-runner]
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|I don't think you people realize that this isn't necessarily copying Apple. The entry on Google's blog says that this has been the internal name of the page since day one. That's why the link to your personal page has always been: google.com/ig
The "i" is for "I" as in "personal."
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|That doesn't fly - doesn't matter what their "internal" name was, nor is it a question of copying Apple. As soon as someone wishes to do branding in public, they need to address the trademark issue. At that point, the question of whether a trademark would be confusing to consumers comes into play.
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|iGoogle iIs iThe iDevil.
iWhat iIs iGoing iOn iThese iDays iWith iPeople iCopying iEveryone iElse iJust iTo iBe iTrendy?
iWhat iA iJoke. iStupid iGoogle.
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|Not to offend anyone here by misusing a word in a derogatory sense -- but...
This is gay.
iGoogle my ass.
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|Feh, once the "igoogle" branding took over this morning, I lost all my content, if i have to set everything up again i'm going to be some pissed.
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|I noticed that as well. However, I rarely use the google personalized page, when you have more powerful rss feed readers available, it's kind've a silly product.
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|I hate this 'i' branding on everything.
When everyone is doing it, what does it stand for? Nothing! It's "me too" branding. If you are a brand manager suggesting 'i' branding you should be fired. Is that the best you can do?
Honestly, I'm surprised we haven't see an 'iTurd' yet.
BBL, I'm off to use the iInternet...
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|This is exactly what I'm talking about:
http://www.brookstone.com/store/531707.html
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|http://www.urbandictiona...m/define.php?term=iTurd
It is slang.
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|I bet we'll see a lawsuit out of Apple for Google's naming convention on this.
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|And if the mystical "Google Phone" ever becomes reality, maybe they'll call it the "iGooglePhone". :)
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|"People? You mean 'Sheeple'"
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|OK, this just seems like they're asking for trouble.
I was wondering what the "ig" in the URL meant though, heh.
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|It is just as correct to spell Netvibes as NetVibes than it is to spell Firefox as FireFox.
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|Actually... any correct spelling is determined by whoever coined the name... Mozilla calls it "Firefox". I still know what "FireFox" means, but it's not correct capitalization, and Firefox's spell checker flags it as such. :)
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|I'm surprised they can get away with this. I would have thought that Apple has done a sufficiently good job releasing products whose names all start with a lowercase "i" that an attempt by anyone else to register a trademark starting with lowercase "i" followed by uppercase anything should fail due to the potential for confusion in the marketplace within the same sector (the main reason for denying a trademark to someone).
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|Eric s*** is on the Apple board. I'm sure he's talked to Apple about this and if not, I'm sure Google can withstand a lawsuit.
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|linksys owns the iphone trademark. trademarks are more pointed towards the name than they are the manner in which things are named. for example, Lindows... now Linspire.
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|The legal phrase is "genericide". It's too late for Apple to mount a viable legal assault on "iWhatever" trademarks. They've let too many go on without a legal challenge. You have to defend your trademark (and show tangible proof of reasonable effort) in order to try that. Other examples include Kleenex, Xerox, and Aspirin. There have been "iWash" clothes washers and driers on sale at Lowes for well over two years now. That's only one example.
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|Well, maybe! Although it's the case that Linksys (or rather the company they acquired years ago) got that trademark, they didn't do the necessary ongoing work to PROTECT their trademark. The law says you lose your rights after a few years if you don't show that you're using the mark. That means that Linksys (Cisco) would have to reapply for the trademark and at that point, (as we saw), it's not clear they would be successful because of Apple's usage. That's why (I believe) the spat between Apple and Cisco got settled so easily.
Similarly, Lindows got changed because of concerns that it seemed so much like "Windows" that consumers (not those who hang out in this forum of course) would be confused by the naming and perhaps think they were getting a Microsoft product.
So that's why I'm surprised about iGoogle....unless of course there's some as yet undisclosed Apple/Google partnering going on!
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|how could someone just trademarks 1 letter. If that's the case, I will go ahead and trademark all the alphabets. Sue every one who use an alphabet in as the first characters, be it people or products.
From now on, you cannot call yourself John, Joe, etc.. your new name is 123zd80
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|You missed the point. It's not "one letter". It's the consistent use of a given letter (and letter case) in front of a name. "iWhatever", not just "i". Regardless, it's not trademarked as everything assumes.
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|But not a GOOD example!
Trademarks are industry specific. It is quite possible for two companies to have the same trademark if they are being used in two sufficiently different ways that a consumer won't be "confused". It's unlikely that a clothes washer would be confused with an MP3 player (for example) so there's nothing to challenge.
--->There have been "iWash" clothes washers and driers on sale at Lowes for well over two years now. That's only one example.
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|Good point. The iPhone debacle was probably a better example of conflicting marks in a given market. However, the original comment was regarding broad use of the "i" prefix alone. I'm sure if Google starts using "i" in front of products that directly (or closely) compete with Apples marked products/services, Apple will spank their attorneys with a wet towel and send them off to the attack.
In any case, it seems to me that they're taking the wrong approach. Why adopt another renown mark approach when the "G" mark was working just fine? GMail, for example. Who knows. Maybe they hired away some of Microsoft's marketing geniuses (let's hope not)
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|eh, if this doesn't use Google as a verb then...
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|Welcome back to the year 1998 folks...Maybe now we can get our Google in different colors? Bondi Blue Google anyone?. I think Eric s*** was spending too much time at Apple because now he thinks he's a iCEO.
Isn't that insanely great!
http://www.noheat.com
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