When you’re an upstart, it can be extraordinarily difficult to compete with the big guys. Nobody knows that better than Jerry Anders, CTO of Saratoga, Calif.-based Javeo Corporation, who claims his company has been run over not once, but twice-first by Google, and most recently by Sun Microsystems.
Anders co-founded Javeo (pronounced ja-vA-o) in 2002, and immediately purchased the domain gmail.net. Javeo’s Gmail (the “G” stands for “graphical) used AJAX to implement a web-based email service-Anders and company’s “better mouse trap” as they called it.
As Anders explains to Dave Carpe, author of the blog, PassingNotes.com, Javeo Corp.’s better mousetrap had to be shelved in 2004, shortly after the release of Google’s Gmail.com service. The move to place gmail.net on the backburner was a judgment call, as Google’s email service was likely to swallow up any recognition of Javeo’s product. Anders speculates that Google may have wanted to buy the domain.
“…with the release of Google’s email service back in 2004, we had to shelve our gmail.net domain and use our corporate domain, javeo.com. Interestingly enough, right after Google released their version of gmail, we were contacted by a legal firm that would not disclose their client, but stated that their client was very interested in acquiring our gmail.net domain. That could have been Google, but it could have been Microsoft for all we know. Anyway, we refused to sell and at this point we’re holding on to the domain,” Anders says on PassingNotes.
The overlap with Gmail can be chalked up to bad luck as well as bad timing. Similar fates have awaited other Gmail hopefuls, all of whom have registered a Gmail domain of some sort, and all of whom are awaiting a trademark award, which has yet to be given.
But where this story gets more interesting is Anders latest report to Carpe about his company’s struggle with Sun Microsystems. Anders says Sun’s legal team has contacted him threatening a lawsuit over the Javeo brand name because Sun feels it causes confusion in the marketplace with Java.
“What in gods name did we do to piss-off the corporate gods?” asks Anders. “We’re a 2-man company with 2,800 pound gorillas sitting on our shoulders. I’m not sure how much longer we can hold out.”
But Carpe, a feisty one it looks like, has high hopes for Javeo’s chances.
“It takes a big man to cry, but it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man crying, and that man crying is going to be Sun, not Javeo,” Carpe predicted to Murdok.
While Carpe is optimistic for Javeo’s future, Anders told Murdok the future looks bleak for his company.
“Given Sun’s legal might and recent increase in frequency of harassing letters that threaten immediate legal action if we do not cease and desist, we have, in fact, modified the Javeo Web site to stop accepting applicants. We do not believe that they have a legal leg to stand on, but we will most likely have to tear down the Javeo web site because we do not have the resources to fight them in court,” said Anders.
Sun Microsystems and Google could not be reached for comment.
