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I don't think single common English words should be trademark-able. Remember when Zilog tried to trademark the letter Z? Didn't Intel try to trademark a number?
Still seems stupid to not at least try to buy the facebook+domain name and the twitter handle @alphabet. I bet the twitter owner would love to part with it for a few million. Even BMW might be amenable to enough scratch.
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?
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unless you're so big that your reputation precedes you...
Agreed that nobody is going to think Google is a marginal company. IANAL, but I'd think it's a bit odd that nobody from Google would contact BMW (as BMW spokesperson said in article). An announcement this big concerning two large companies doesn't seem a situation where you'd ask forgiveness rather than permission.
I don't think single common English words should be trademark-able. Remember when Zilog tried to trademark the letter Z? Didn't Intel try to trademark a number?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good thing one of them is a car company...
But Alphabet is a holding company of sorts. I don't think we'll be seeing "Alphabet self driving cars". Google's efforts on self driving cars will probably continue to be branded under Google or will get its own branding name.
Seems like a non-issue. They did no research ahead of time regarding alphabet.com/@alphabet handles... this would indicate that they are not that concerned about the visibility/branding of the holding company, which stands to reason. It's not like they didn't think about these things when they were naming, they just don't care.