Gmail in Germany?: Nein Danke

Google has lost another court battle in Germany to trademark the term Gmail.  The Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) has just published a ruling made last month, dismissing Google’s appeal of the original decision against the company. The trademark will remain with an email service founded in 2000 by Daniel Giersch.  

Plus, German courts are growing weary of Google’s repeated legal attempts to co-opt the brand and have banned the company from taking up the Gmail/G-mail issue outside of OHIM or an official settlement (which Giersch is not interested in).

Google will be forced to use Google Mail nomenclature in Germany, although email addresses will still use @gmail.com.

Spammers to Gmail Captcha: Gotcha!

From The Register:

Spammers have broken captcha at Gmail with a 20% success record. With Gmail an unlikely domain to be blacklisted, spammers have gained a powerful, free and incredibly annoying new weapon with which to spread their penis enhancement and re-fi mortgage offers (one of which I did recently…not from a email, so save the hate mail….I’ll leave you in the dark as to which).

The spammers are believed to be the same ones that broke MSN’s Live captcha a few weeks ago.

Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) challenge-response systems, are used to prevent accounts being created until a user correctly identifies letters in an image, are designed to ensure requests are made by a human rather than an automated program. Websense reckons the latest Gmail Captcha hack is the most sophisticated it has seen to date.

Spammers Conceding to Google?

From Wired:

“Google won’t disclose numbers, but the company says that spam attempts, as a percentage of e-mail that’s transmitted through its Gmail system, have waned over the last year. That could indicate that some spammers have gotten discouraged and have stopped trying to get through Google’s spam filters.”

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/11/google_spam

I use Yahoo mail far more than I do Gmail. I have no idea why. I get tons of spam daily, much of it with obvious spam titles. Maybe its time I make the switch.