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.

Yeah, to imply that the leaders of a massively successful company didn't think to look into naming issues is extremely naive or grasping for news straws at best.

In a way they may have not or they would have confirmed that BMW wouldn't have an issue with it.

It's not up to BMW. It's up to trademark law. And trademark law is quite well established in this context that there's no issue.

Exactly, holding companies do not need to worry about their marketing. http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

Wow, that web page is amazing. It's straight out of the 90s but it also has a Geico ad on it, which I cannot fathom why they would possibly need or want that.

Geico is a BH owned company

Runs into in what way?

Sure, BMW owns alphabet.com -- Alphabet, Inc., uses abc.xyz, and probably doesn't care about alphabet.com. They aren't a consumer-facing entity, all the consumer facing entities are presumably going to be subsidiaries with their own names and identities.

And, sure, BMW has a trademark on Alphabet in particular domains. Again, Alphabet, Inc., is a parent entity, its quite likely the subsidiaries will all be doing business under their own names, not using "Alphabet" as a trademark in a way that would conflict with BMW's trademark.

Runs into in the sense that the first website people will type when trying to access the website of Google's Alphabet is surely alphabet.com.

all those people scrambling to visit a holding company's website ;)

Why would people be accessing the proposed alphabet.com? There's not going to be any consumer related stuff there. In fact, I'd be surprised if abc.xyz will change much.

Yes, I know that. But I can see where the "problem" resides, even if it's not actually a problem at all :)

I think the point of the name is to be as common and forgettable as possible. Alphabet isn't going to be some huge brand or anything. It's literally just a holding company for the major bands (former) Google wants to see flourish on their own.

If they could just get enough google juice, the domain name wouldn't matter so much.

Like Self-Driving Cars, perhaps?

Timely considering PG's post earlier in the week http://paulgraham.com/name.html

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.

Permission/forgiveness for what?

There's a fairly common saying about it being preferable to "beg forgiveness" than to "ask permission". In this case, I was referring to Google possibly mentioning to BMW their intent to use the Alphabet name.

Regarding of company domain names, I respectably disagree with Paul,and I agree with Ev http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less-impo...

Maybe I'm wrong, and it's most easy to "my mind" accept Ev idea.

In this case, the argument is easily made that a domain name is even less important because the company in question is Google itself.

Engadget article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043212

---

...the Internet domain alphabet.com, as well as the trademark Alphabet, already belonged to someone else — namely, the German automaker BMW. And if they had dialed BMW headquarters in Munich, they would have discovered something else: BMW does not want to sell.

Well that's embarrassing. Good thing they launched with abc.xyz.

But wait...

Just because one company uses a name does not mean another company cannot use it. Trademark infringement occurs if another company’s use could create confusion with consumers, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

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.

But wouldn't Alphabet's cars be called something else?

To which holding company named "Alphabet" are you referring? Google's or BMW's?

Both, but I meant Google's Alphabet's cars.

BMW noticed Google's pushing into the (self-driving) car business. That's what their trademark complaint's based on.

> BMW noticed Google's pushing into the (self-driving) car business.

Kind of hard not to.

> That's what their trademark complaint's based on.

BMW hasn't filed a trademark complaint. They haven't even indicated that they think that there is a violation. They have said they are looking into whether any infringement has taken place, which is many miles short of having a complaint.

its BMW ... not a patent troll ..

Journalist needs to create Article, types Alphabet into Google.com.

Is it actually important for the holding company to be well branded ?

This is an article looking for a problem. Google doesn't care about Alphabet.com nor did Google ever approach BMW at any time to make an offer for it. It's a holding company, not a brand and in keeping with Google's playful nature abc.xyz fits them just fine.

They couldn't care less. The name does not actually mater for an holding and the website will not likely be used for anything. I think no one will actually search for this.

alphabet.com does not even reach the page 1 nor will abc.xyz (unless they are faking results)

Google -> abc.xyz -> alphabet -> a to z -> a2z.com -> Amazon

One step closer to Googlezon [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIC_2014

I'd be inclined to say abc20xyz

-> abc.wtf

a16z

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?

Yes, and UPS has trademarked brown (and T-mobile has purple). Remember that trademarks are limited to certain categories. If you're not competing with UPS, you can use brown etc.

I know how trademark works (I have a registered tm myself), but am suggesting that it change. To my mind trademarking 'brown' is so thoroughly uncreative. A trademark should be more than a common English word.

Trademark isn't intended to be about creativity (that's copyright), trademark is intended to be about preventing commercial confusion.

The "Pixels" thing clearly shows that trademarking common English words is ripe for confusion. A little creativity would go a long way towards reducing confusion.

You can't make DMCA request for trademarks. That was a copyright complaint that looked for a common English word. The complaint would have been overly broad whether or not it was trademarked.

Intel tried to trademark their processor model number (80386, 80486) to prevent AMD from using them. The trademark was denied and they switched to using names (Pentium instead of 80586) since then

I have heard this many times but I couldn't find a source for it. Do you have one?

TL;DR: Alphabet can't buy alphabet.com but clearly didn't intend to because it is already using abc.xyz.

Just a click-bait headline.

Reminds me of Qwikster. The Twitter handle was already taken, and wasn't the avatar Elmo with a cigarette in his mouth?

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.

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.

> Still seems stupid to not at least try to buy the facebook+domain name and the twitter handle @alphabet.

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?

> BMW is examining whether any trademark infringement has taken place, Ms. Sandstede said.

how likely are they gonna get trademark infringement notice?

This is a non-issue that will be cured when Alphabet's car subsidiari sells self-driving BMW. Juzt like the non-issue between Apple, the device maker, and Apple, the owner of Beatles songs, was finally cured when Beatles songs started to be sold on iTunes.

I have been looking all over, but can't find where Alphabet is incorporated. Anybody have the answer?

Delaware. "Alphabet, Inc" was created on July 23rd, 2015.

Maybe google plans to buy BMW ...

After BMW just bought the last remains of Nokia (including the smart-driving subsidy of Nokia that produced 3D scans of all european streets), I don’t think so.

Also Google is, for a carmaker, tiny. VW, for example, is over twice as large as Google.

> Also Google is, for a carmaker, tiny. VW, for example, is over twice as large as Google.

By what measure? Market cap, Google is one of the biggest companies in the world, (#2 behind Apple, last I heard) in the neighborhood of $450 billion. VW Group is around $100 billion. Google's cash on hand is on the rough order of magnitude of VW's market cap.

Google has less assets, half of the profit and half of the revenue of VW.

Google has a higher valuation due to an investment bubble, not due to actual economics.

> Google has less assets, half of the profit and half of the revenue of VW.

Most recent quarterly numbers are more like Google has 1/3 of the revenue of VW but 85% of the profits.

> Google has a higher valuation due to an investment bubble, not due to actual economics.

Even if it was due to an investment bubble rather than, say, rational expectations of stronger long-term growth based on market characteristics, well, investment bubbles are as much "actual economics" as anything else.

Advertising in general is a grossly overvalued business.

VW will still build cars, engines and small-scale power plants in a century.

Web advertising is already becoming an issue now, with more and more people moving to mobile, vendors pre-installing adblockers and even ad agencies starting to doubt the effectiveness of easily overlooked Google ads.

And still, VW, a single carmaker in a single company, is larger than the overvalued internet giant of Google that controls advertising in all but a handful of countries.

Google is a tiny player in the rest of the world economy.

G is for Google, B is for BMW ...

haha. this can be the only explanation!! jk