Google China is being sued by Beijing Guge Sci-Tech for supposedly infringing on the firm’s name:

Beijing Guge Sci-Tech alleges that Google has infringed on the firm’s name. According to the court documents, the name “Guge” was officially registered in April 2006 by Beijing Guge Sci-Tech and Google didn’t register the name until November of 2007. Google’s response is that reports on the Internet showed that it intended to use the name “Guge” at the time it was registered by the Chinese company.

Beijing Guge Sci-Tech wants Google to change its Chinese name and to pay legal costs although no sum was mentioned in the court documents. The name “Guge” is not a real word in Chinese but a transliteration.The characters mean “valley song”.

I don’t quite know the exact laws for company names within China, but in the US at least, as long as the two companies are not competing within the same areas, then there’s no issue usually with having the same name (to a point of course). As for registering the domain name, well, first come first serve in the US once again. Still would be funny to see what Google China would rename itself as:

Guge wants Google to change it, and unless the courts side with Google for political/money reasons (and they certainly could), Google may need to rename itself.

A suggestion: How about 大数, the Chinese translation of the word “googol”?

Seriously, would be more fun to figure out what would be better names for 谷歌.

  • 骨骼 - bones, skeleton (eh, not funny)
  • 古哥 - ancient older brother (probably not the way to promote their brand)
  • 辜哥 - guilty / criminal older brother (fits for the situation possibly)
  • 顾蛤 - attending to clams (I dunno, seemed an odd combination)
  • 钴铬 - cobalt cadmium (yeah Periodic Table!)

Feel free to suggest other ones!