It’s been five long years, but Google users in the United Kingdom will finally be able to join the rest of the emailing world in using the “gmail.com” domain instead of the longer and somewhat fake sounding “googlemail.com” domain for their email addresses.
Google software engineer Greg Bullock writes in the company’s blog that the change will be rolling out over the next week.
Bullock notes that the change, althought seemingly small, has some larger implications:
Since “gmail” is 50% fewer characters than “googlemail,” we estimate this name change will save approximately 60 million keystrokes a day. At about 217 microjoules per keystroke, that’s about the energy of 20 bonbons saved every day!
According to the BBC, Google was not allowed to use the “gmail.com” domain in the UK because of a trademark dispute in the country. A company called Independent International Investment Research claimed that it had been using the name “Gmail” since 2002, two years prior to Google’s launch of its email service.
Google has faced similar issues with its “Gmail” name in Germany, Poland, Russia and even the United States, where it finally was granted a trademark in 2007. The trademark dispute in the UK was settled in September of 2009, when Google paid IIR more than £200,000 for the intellectual property rights to Gmail.
According to Google, users will be able to decide whether or not they would like to keep their “googlemail.com” domain or switch over to the shorter “gmail.com” domain.
