Google has been forced to rename the Gmail service in England to Google Mail.

This happened under a lot of pressure from a company called ‘International Investment Research’ (IIR). It claims to have a service called G-Mail, which was introduced in May 2002. This service was launched two years before Google launched its online mail service.

By the time you’re reading this, Google has renamed its service in England - The URL has already been changed for British users. The case between IIR and Google is not finished. The next step is to figure out what they are going to do with the current Gmail addresses.

IIR wanted to start a lawsuit after it spoke with Google for 15 months without any results. I think IIR isn’t making itself popular by pushing this suit and is better off making a deal with Google and changing the name of its service. I just can’t imagine that IIR has more subscriptions than Google in England.

[John van Leeuwen]

Tags: uk, google, gmail, google mail, iir, g-mail