It’s been long established that just because Google has registered a domain, it doesn’t mean the company has any plans other than keeping the domain out of non-company hands; googleblows.com is a good example. But what about trademark applications? That’s a bit more expensive and serious method of protecting certain names.
A quick search through trademark applications at the USPTO’s website brings back about 60 Google-related attempts at trademarking, many from Google and (surprisingly) many not from Google.
(It’s hard to imagine a trademark lawyer not advising his client in 2006 that the term “Google” itself my be a bit difficult to get approved, even if it’s for real estate. Likewise for terms like “GoogleLaw,” “realitygoogle,” and “google pod.” Really? Maybe they were betting “google” would be declared generic because of its appearance in the dictionary as a verb.)
One interesting entry is Google’s own approved application for FLOODLIGHT, which is described as “computer software for use in online advertising for tracking and monitoring of websites and online advertising.”
Many obscure trademarks are googleable, bringing back a record stored somewhere of what that mark might be related to. Measure Map is one of them, which later was integrated in Google Analytics. But floodlight is different, unless Google’s being too specific with the term—all search roads lead to the actual kind of light.
Unlike Smart Barter—a term relating to “broadcasting services, namely, a marketplace in which radio stations may trade advertising time for monetary credit to be used towards the purchase of various goods and services—which Google abandoned in 2006, the ownership of Floodlight was granted, which makes one wonder what became of it.
Registering domains is a bit more whimsical than applying for trademark. Will something ever become of domains like Googletv.com, Googlemovies.net, Googlesex.com? Maybe, maybe not. Trademarks, though, are usually something a company definitely plans to use, like Feedflare, which is now about of Feedburner.
While we wonder what the original plan behind Floodlight was, we can also wonder if Google muscled out a stuffed-animal creator back in the day. “Google Trout” was applied for way back in 1998, right around when Google launched, and referred to a stuffed, well, trout—maybe this one on eBay–used in commerce since 1993. The Google Trout creator’s trademark wasn’t cancelled until 2006.
