Domain Dispute Halts Google's Gmail in Germany

A dispute over the rights to the GMAIL domain name in Germany has broken out. According to Heise Online Google has stopped providing email addresses in Germany ending @gmail.com. New German customers for Google's free email service are now getting @googlemail.com addresses instead.

For now Google is not switching its existing German @gmail users over to the new name but they might be obliged to do so at a later date.

Google's dispute is with Hamburg based businessman Daniel Giersch who claims rights to the G-MAIL name in Germany.

It appears Giersch also registered the GMAIL name in Switzerland in March 2005.

On his web site Giersch states that his G-mail service develops concepts and ideas for informative and efficient data exchange...