Google Creates Alphabet, but Runs into BMW
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's not like they didn't think about these things when they were naming, they just don't care.
Sure, BMW owns alphabet.com -- Alphabet, Inc., uses abc.xyz, and probably doesn't care about alphabet.com. They aren't a consumer-facing entity, all the consumer facing entities are presumably going to be subsidiaries with their own names and identities.
And, sure, BMW has a trademark on Alphabet in particular domains. Again, Alphabet, Inc., is a parent entity, its quite likely the subsidiaries will all be doing business under their own names, not using "Alphabet" as a trademark in a way that would conflict with BMW's trademark.
Maybe I'm wrong, and it's most easy to "my mind" accept Ev idea.
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...the Internet domain alphabet.com, as well as the trademark Alphabet, already belonged to someone else — namely, the German automaker BMW. And if they had dialed BMW headquarters in Munich, they would have discovered something else: BMW does not want to sell.
Well that's embarrassing. Good thing they launched with abc.xyz.
But wait...
Just because one company uses a name does not mean another company cannot use it. Trademark infringement occurs if another company’s use could create confusion with consumers, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Kind of hard not to.
> That's what their trademark complaint's based on.
BMW hasn't filed a trademark complaint. They haven't even indicated that they think that there is a violation. They have said they are looking into whether any infringement has taken place, which is many miles short of having a complaint.
alphabet.com does not even reach the page 1 nor will abc.xyz (unless they are faking results)
Just a click-bait headline.
Knowing Google the decision was probably about as hasty as Qwikster was.
It's not that holding company names aren't important. Kraft realized otherwise. They certainly thought about it before they picked Mondelez.
Why? AFAICT, the whole point of Alphabet, Inc. is to maintain common ownership while reducing the visible ties between the various components. I don't see Alphabet qua Alphabet being the focal point of PR efforts, so why do they need those kind of public-facing identities?
> I bet the twitter owner would love to part with it for a few million. Even BMW might be amenable to enough scratch.
And I bet Alphabet, Inc., is happy keeping the money and letting the current owners keep the Facebook and Twitter identities, the Alphabet.com domain name, etc.
Sure, they could spend money buying everything in existence that has the word "Alphabet" associated with it -- but why?
how likely are they gonna get trademark infringement notice?
Also Google is, for a carmaker, tiny. VW, for example, is over twice as large as Google.
By what measure? Market cap, Google is one of the biggest companies in the world, (#2 behind Apple, last I heard) in the neighborhood of $450 billion. VW Group is around $100 billion. Google's cash on hand is on the rough order of magnitude of VW's market cap.
Google has a higher valuation due to an investment bubble, not due to actual economics.
Most recent quarterly numbers are more like Google has 1/3 of the revenue of VW but 85% of the profits.
> Google has a higher valuation due to an investment bubble, not due to actual economics.
Even if it was due to an investment bubble rather than, say, rational expectations of stronger long-term growth based on market characteristics, well, investment bubbles are as much "actual economics" as anything else.
VW will still build cars, engines and small-scale power plants in a century.
Web advertising is already becoming an issue now, with more and more people moving to mobile, vendors pre-installing adblockers and even ad agencies starting to doubt the effectiveness of easily overlooked Google ads.
And still, VW, a single carmaker in a single company, is larger than the overvalued internet giant of Google that controls advertising in all but a handful of countries.
Google is a tiny player in the rest of the world economy.