Google has at its disposal the domain gmail.de and the Gmail trademark in Germany

Cybersquatters are pretty numerous in any country. Many of them call themselves homeowners, but the matter is not in the name, but the essence of their activity - these guys are trying to register beautiful domain names, or domains whose name coincides with the name of a well-known product / service / company. All this is done to make a profit on the sale / resale of the domain. Good or bad - we will not judge, but sometimes the work of cybersquatters lead to some incidents. For example, in Germany, Google fought for the gmail.de domain for many years, owned by a person who has nothing to do with the corporation (by the way, gmail.ru does not belong to Google either, but here it seems like no one is fighting).

As far as one can understand, the corporation simply agreed with the cybersquatter, making him an offer that he could not refuse. What exactly this was for the proposal, unfortunately, is unknown. Whether the domain is bought (which is most likely), or obtained by virtue of some other agreements is still unclear. As far as you can understand, even the Gmail trademark in Germany belonged to a private person, and the company was able to negotiate the transfer of rights to the company's trademark.
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To date, Gmail users in Germany have worked with user@googlemail.com. Now, the situation is likely to change, and Google will use the resulting domain for relevant purposes. The company itself does not yet give any comments on this issue, refusing to provide details of the transaction on the domain (one of the conditions of the transaction is known - this is non-disclosure of conditions, such is a pun). In addition, it is not yet clear what the corporation is going to do with the resulting domain and trademark.

Most likely, gmail.de will become the main address for the Google email service in Germany. Well, the corresponding trademark of the corporation is also useful here. It is a pity that the cost of the transaction is not reported - knowing the amounts that are used in such cases, we can think that we are talking about hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars, because not only in the domain of the case, the company received the Gmail trademark.

Via engadget