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mmcirvinFRIDAY, Feb. 2, 2007 (MM) - Google, Inc. announced today that its corporate name would no longer be officially registered as "Google Cleaners, Inc."
Originally incorporated in 1974 as "Professor Google's New-Fangled Tetrachlorinated Waterless Clothes-Laundering Sensation", the company had held the simpler "Google Cleaners" name since 1982. Once known for its chain of Gay Nineties-themed dry-cleaning outlets bearing the red, yellow and blue Google logo and beloved, mustachioed and monocled "Professor Google" mascot, the company in recent years had closed down its chain of brick-and-mortar dry cleaners and concentrated on its popular Internet search service and related business, though an Internet-based "Google Cleaners (BETA)" service ran experimentally in its Labs section for 17 months in 2004 and 2005.
Analysts believed that, while Google had stopped using "Cleaners" in official promotion and correspondence since 2003, the company had retained the name to strengthen its defensive position in trademark lawsuits from Googlesphere, licensing rightsholders for the lucrative "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" newspaper comics publishing empire. While Google's counsel argued that the almost complete non-appearance of Barney Google in his eponymous comic strip since the death of creator Billy DeBeck in 1942 rendered the trademark indefensible, Googlesphere pointed to a 1978 settlement forbidding Google Cleaners from entering the comics business under the Google name as an enforceable contract, and had entered a total of 1,645 trademark lawsuits on the subject following the rise of Google's Internet search engine, whenever it could be proven that a search for "comics" on Google returned at least one hit.
The flood of trademark suits was interrupted only by Google's short-lived decision to exit Internet search and focus on its core dry-cleaning business for six months in 2001 and 2002, during which period the search engine was temporarily part of the Geocities free-home-page service and existed as "Blortal! The Portal That Blinks Constantly."
"Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" is currently drawn by John Rose.
Originally incorporated in 1974 as "Professor Google's New-Fangled Tetrachlorinated Waterless Clothes-Laundering Sensation", the company had held the simpler "Google Cleaners" name since 1982. Once known for its chain of Gay Nineties-themed dry-cleaning outlets bearing the red, yellow and blue Google logo and beloved, mustachioed and monocled "Professor Google" mascot, the company in recent years had closed down its chain of brick-and-mortar dry cleaners and concentrated on its popular Internet search service and related business, though an Internet-based "Google Cleaners (BETA)" service ran experimentally in its Labs section for 17 months in 2004 and 2005.
Analysts believed that, while Google had stopped using "Cleaners" in official promotion and correspondence since 2003, the company had retained the name to strengthen its defensive position in trademark lawsuits from Googlesphere, licensing rightsholders for the lucrative "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" newspaper comics publishing empire. While Google's counsel argued that the almost complete non-appearance of Barney Google in his eponymous comic strip since the death of creator Billy DeBeck in 1942 rendered the trademark indefensible, Googlesphere pointed to a 1978 settlement forbidding Google Cleaners from entering the comics business under the Google name as an enforceable contract, and had entered a total of 1,645 trademark lawsuits on the subject following the rise of Google's Internet search engine, whenever it could be proven that a search for "comics" on Google returned at least one hit.
The flood of trademark suits was interrupted only by Google's short-lived decision to exit Internet search and focus on its core dry-cleaning business for six months in 2001 and 2002, during which period the search engine was temporarily part of the Geocities free-home-page service and existed as "Blortal! The Portal That Blinks Constantly."
"Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" is currently drawn by John Rose.
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What the heck
Date: 2007-02-03 06:37 pm (UTC)Re: What the heck
Date: 2007-02-03 10:35 pm (UTC)No,
Date: 2007-02-04 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-05 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 05:20 am (UTC)