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Comment by tome | Hacker News Reader

Hang on, what's the story here?

Did they formerly detect signups from the UK somehow, and force them to use @googlemail, whereas international signups were allowed @gmail?

If so, how bizarre.

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Yes, it was a trademark dispute. I believe the same is true in Germany (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10096107.stm)

so what happens now if you're in germany?

Germany isn't a part of the UK, so things will work exactly as before. There's an existing mail service in Germany called G-mail, and the agreement (after a court case in 2007) is that the owner of that trademark can use it in Germany, Monaco, Norway and Switzerland, but nowhere else.

The English trademark was owned by someone else, and wasn't in active use, afaict.

Update: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/03/gmail-uk/ says Google reached a settlement after "engaging in legal proceedings at the trademark office" (read: pointing out that it wasn't in use, in order to get it revoked).

Nothing, this applies only to UK users for the moment.

Yes, if you signed up from the UK, GMail used to display name@googlemail.com instead of name@gmail.com. Both versions worked though, so if someone sent you an email to yourname@gmail.com you still received it, it was just an UI thing really.

I'm not sure how whether they used IP geolocation or the country you specified when you signed up to decide if you're in the UK or not.

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