Google Under Fire For Calling Their Language "Go" 512
Norsefire writes "Since releasing the 'Go' programming language on Tuesday, Google has been under fire for using the same name as another programming language that was first publicly documented in 2003. 'Go!' was created by Francis McCabe and Keith Clark. McCabe published a book about the language in 2007, and he is not happy. He told InformationWeek in an email: 'I do not have a trademark on my language. It was intended as a somewhat non-commercial language in the tradition of logic programming languages. It is in the tradition of languages like Prolog. In particular, my motivation was bringing some of the discipline of software engineering to logic programming.'"
Go! (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually pretty funny Google itself didn't see this coming. Results in Google for go programming language [google.com] are about the existing Go! language and the main developers book about it.
In this case Google should really change the name since its been used in an existing programming language for years. But maybe they are:
"We recently became aware of the Go! issue and are now looking into the matter further," a company spokesperson said in an e-mail.
Re:Go! (Score:5, Funny)
Even more funny is the fact that they hosting their language on code.google.com
Perhaps we shouldn't worry that much about them harvesting our data after all?
Re:Go! (Score:5, Funny)
There once was a language named "Go"
By Google it's made to help the Pro
But there's a claim the name
it sounds quite the same
as another fellow's lingo
This other lingo named "Go!"
"It was earlier" it's inventor says so.
"Why didn't you look
on a webpage or in my book,
it's even google search result two!"
"So Google, rename your thing!
Or in front of a judge you i bring!
Lots of users agree
it was disgraceful by thee
just be sorry and give me a ring!"
So the question arise
allthough google might despise
"what new name shall we be giving
to the lingo that's not yet living
and has not yet seen this world with it's own eyes?"
One fella proposed the name "Goo"
Which is similar to pythons clone "Boo"
But also this name is taken
and not yet forsaken
and honestly sounds close to "Poo".
Another said "Lango" is cool,
He would take such thing as a tool.
But a lingo named "Lango"
Only rhymes "Jango" or "Tango"
This is real, not Star Wars, you fool!
Lots of other names were called
some were boring, some others were bold
The question still remain
Will google act or refrain
from renaming it's lingo as told?
The remainder of my little piece
Is the ironic issue of this
Why did you, google miss
to google "go" before release
You would have known it's not your name, but his'!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know if there's a Poet Laureate position for Slashdot, but either way I nominate this guy. Brilliant!
Re:Go! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's actually pretty funny Google itself didn't see this coming. Results in Google for go programming language [google.com] are about the existing Go! language and the main developers book about it.
In this case Google should really change the name since its been used in an existing programming language for years. But maybe they are:
"We recently became aware of the Go! issue and are now looking into the matter further," a company spokesperson said in an e-mail.
I don't know what they need to look into. There are only two real aspects to look at here. First, from a technical standpoint, it could confuse people want to learn Google's Go and end up learning the other Go. From a legal standpoint, if the guy didn't trademark the name, who cares? He doesn't really have a case. But it does kind of fly in the face of the "Don't be evil" slogan.
If they want to be nice, they could just rename it to something like Go++ or Go2.
Re:Go! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But it does kind of fly in the face of the "Don't be evil" slogan.
Not really. There was no malice here anywhere. Nobody tried to be evil, nobody is trying to be evil this moment and nobody is trying to be evil in the future.
Some dude had an idea a couple years back that was so utterly obscurethat no Wikipedia page existed for it. Let that sink in: There's a page on Wikipedia for every actor that was ever seen in the background of any Star Trek episode; yet this supposed "Go language" was so unknown that nobody ever bothered to make a page for it (until yesterday). And t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't mean to say that Google is evil for stealing this guy's name. I was merely stating that this could become a PR nightmare if it becomes a big enough deal.
Imagine the spin that could be placed here:
Some poor computer programmer invented a programming language with the hope of making the world a better place and here comes the big bad evil corporation Google and steals the name of this language. When the poor chap brings it up, the door is slammed on his face and Google uses the name anyway. This p
Re:Go! (Score:5, Informative)
He published in "Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence" and it's cited [acm.org] in the ACM portal. Who cares what Wiki has or doesn't have.
This wasn't some geocities page with talk about a language that was never developed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Google have precisely one stage of announcing it to the public."
Because BasilBrush hath declared it so. To hell with reality and a presented example that happens to be the most well known google service next to search.
Gmail was leaked pre-alpha, announced alpha, announced beta with invites, leaked in press releases several times and then announced again after invites, and finally announced once more at public release.
Google milks all the press and buzz it can with every service even when it is only thinkin
Re:Go! (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case Google should really change the name since its been used in an existing programming language for years.
Why? Go! is just another hobby language that's only been around for a few years. The only thing it has generated is a few academic papers. There probably have been thousands of those in the past 50 or so years. I see no reason for Google to change the name of its computing language just because there are already one or more programming languages with similar names. As the previous sentence implies, I wouldn't be surprised to find out there there are several programming languages with something very similar.
Re:Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because it is currently a hobby language doesn't mean something popular might be made with it later. That would result in a naming collision for people (which go language?) and a complex legal battle if both products became successful.
Here's what would happen if nobody says anything: Google's Go gets popular and now has trademark weight. Go! hobby language gets popular because basement developer makes new popular app. Google sees this as a threat to trademark and is forced to use legal action.
Of course, the hobby language Go! could dwindle and produce nothing of value but we don't know that yet. He's actually doing everyone a favor by bringing up this topic right now while both languages don't have much weight to defend. It eliminates the possibility of expensive arguments in the future.
Re:Go! (Score:4, Funny)
Plus every source file would be a .gog [merriam-webster.com]!
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Re:Go! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Go! (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't Go! be pronounced Go(bang)?
Maybe we should use "Gang!" as the name, then.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
"From what I've read, Go! was pretty much unknown to anyone outside a very small group 2 years ago."
From what I've read, Go was pretty much unknown outside of Google until about a week ago.
I said it yesterday, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Two "Go"'s considered harmful.
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Do not pass Go! Do not collect £200
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Better stated as:
GOGO considered harmful
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Not a chance, as its common knowledge that goto's cause the apocalypse.
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(Why did they name it Go? According to the FAQ, they thought "Go Ogle" would be a great name for the debugger. "Goo Ogle" would be just as gooooood.)
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Is Go! alive? (Score:2)
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And as far as I can tell, the wiki entry was created yesterday.
(I'm wiki challenged, so I may be wrong)
Re: (Score:2)
You are correct, it was added by somebody after reading about the go vs go! thing, before then ther wasn't even a reference on "go" disambiguation
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Excellent find,
I'm sure the author is relishing in the Streisand Effect right now.
How far down the page was Go! two days ago if you googled the name?
Someone is getting fired... (Score:3, Funny)
I bet someone at Google will get fired soon...
Either 1 of 2 things may have happened:
1) They used Microsoft Bing to search for potential trademark violations
2) They were too lazy and didn't check at all.
Normal for this crew (Score:2)
If Ken Thompson and Rob Pike were designing it, they probably didn't care about getting fired / marketing implications / public backlash etc. They have a history of choosing provocative names, just look at the plan9 stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Fired? Isn't that exaggerating things a little? ;)
Re:Someone is getting fired... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would hate to have you as a boss.
Oh you had a bug in you code... YOUR FIRRREED!
Oh you tried to come up with a creative name that was taken by some obscure language... YOUR FIRRREED!
When brain storming for ideas in the meeting you idea that we all liked had a problem... YOUR FIRREED!
I bet you work for the government or something. People make mistakes. Googling for GO will lead to a lot of results and people know that and Go is used for a lot of help support too. So they probably realized it is such a common word finding a language like it will be like a needle in a haystack.
Sure google searches now will probably bring you better results however now that it is news it would effect the Google search criteria.
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The way I see it, TM or copyright are really useful so you don't have to demonstrate that you were using that name before... he doesn't have it, so he has to show that he had a book, that the language was published in 2003 with that name, etc.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some things are ethically questionable even when there is no legal problem involved. A concept often forgotten in the corporate world.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Like reusing the name of an obscure project that seemingly died years ago and nobody here has even heard of?"
Right. If Slashdotters haven't heard of it, there's no ethical issue.
Goo (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Goo (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Good idea! No namespace crash there. Everyone can just call it GPL for short, and... ...d'oh!
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"Goo" is a dialect of Lisp, so "Gooo" it is!
Personally, I think Google should rename it "Giggity"..
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"Under fire"? (Score:2)
Tag this one !news.
Since when is a gazillion-dollar company considered "under fire" because one dude with no legal status is annoyed at them?
By that logic, "McDonald's has come under fire this week for serving goodmanj a batch of stale fries last time he went there."
Google should rename Go to Issue 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Issue 9 is kind of a mouthful to pronounce, plus it might be weird in some other languages (like in french where issue means exit)
That said I agree that another name than go could be good if only to make it easier to google.
Re:Google should rename Go to Issue 9 (Score:5, Funny)
Issue 9 is kind of a mouthful to pronounce, plus it might be weird in some other languages (like in french where issue means exit)
Meh, in conversation just shorten it to I9 and you're good to... *cough*. Yeah.
Re:Google should rename Go to Issue 9 (Score:4, Funny)
I think they should name it Issue Express 9 or IE9 for short. Preemptive naming.
Re: (Score:2)
Especially with some guys behind this, also behind Plan 9.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't they just call it "g". Then later, others can invent g++ and g# languages. This won't be gonfusing at all.
Easily avoidable (Score:2)
Couldn't they have googled the name first? You'd kind of expect at least that from them..
Not like Go is such a great name anyway. They should run a poll to decide the name. With enough luck it'll get called Marblecake or Colbert++.
They should plan better (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They should plan better (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone stated before, this is not a legal issue. It's just about basic politeness.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Google did this out of ignorance about a language"
Actually he contacted them numerous times prior to launch and they ignored him and pushed to launch anyway. They maliciously took the name.
The man published a book, has published an article on the language, and he is cited around the web. When google announced the launch there was a discussion thread about his language and his attempts to contact google.
Not only have people heard of Go! they were already following the issue.
It is about courtesy, this violat
Google simply does not care. (Score:2, Insightful)
People! Punctuation is IMPORTANT! (Score:2, Interesting)
It originates from the paper by Dijkstra [arizona.edu] where he argued GoTo statements should be banned. That resulted in many structured programming languages main stream computer science. But what is not k
Re:People! Punctuation is IMPORTANT! (Score:5, Informative)
Google's language is called Go! (with an exclamation mark.) The preexisting language whose existence has been suddenly and rudely revealed is called Go without the exclamation mark.
Other way around. Google's language is "Go". McCabe's language is "Go!".
Re:People! Punctuation is IMPORTANT! (Score:5, Informative)
Dont get me started on the Japanese chess game Go.
I don't know if your post was supposed to be either sarcastic or funny, but Go [wikipedia.org] is neither Japanese nor chess.
It's Chinese, and it's older than chess.
The game commonly referred to as "Japanese chess" is Shogi [wikipedia.org].
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Actually, "Go" is the Japanese name for the game. That's a Romanization, obviously, but is considered phonetically close to the Japanese pronunciation.
Not to sound cranky, but how hard would it be to check the relevant section [wikipedia.org] of the Wikipedia article? Quoting:
Re: (Score:2)
Google's is go, the other guys is go!, those who cannot tell the difference between the 2 should not be programming.
Goop? (Score:2)
I think they should call it Goop. So much code produced by humans has looked like a blob from a bad sci-fi movie that it seems fitting.
Re: (Score:2)
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I still vote for Goop. Have you ever heard the cliche, "you are what you eat"? I think a corollary might emerge: "you are what you code (in)". Some genius will use Goop to code the first artificially intelligent self-replicating nanobots, and they'll decide we're no more significant than any other raw material and turn us all into....
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Biggest scandal since Lindows! (Score:2)
To be honest, i can see the confusion... (Score:2, Funny)
How would Google even know that a language called "Go" exists?
They would have to have some mechanism for searching the internet to do that.
Wikipedia proposes deletion of Go! page (Score:4, Interesting)
This template was added 2009-11-12 14:22
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, maybe I spoke too soon.. a more thorough search reveals one anonymous post that mentions it, but only links to information about the book by the languages author.
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1439072&cid=30057422 [slashdot.org]
The post doesn't mention McCabe, nor anything useful - just some links to (what appears to be) a self-published book.
They should change it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot needs a voting mecahnism for this (Score:2)
A poll would be interesting.
Personally, I think that "Go and "Go! are two different names, so there is no problem.
not an issue (Score:2, Interesting)
One has a bang (!) at the end, while the other doesn't.
Everybody knows the difference between C and C#
The claim has no basis.
Rename it (Score:2)
UUIDs (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Bastard! A little research through a few obscure, un-archived computing journals published in the now defunct USSR would have shown you that I wrote the programming language Ed68c886-6390-4255-813f-48e61f6b0b05 over 25 years ago! The cheek of some people!
Beyond that, 'Go' is not google unique (Score:3, Insightful)
What is wrong with people who name new computer languages? Like it or not, google has become a defacto reference for coders. You can't remember the exact syntax of python string concatenation, Google it and see:
Results 1 - 10 of about 21,200 for python "string concatenation". (0.20 seconds)
And the relevant examples are bunched near the top of the first page. Now try the same for Go:
Results 1 - 10 of about 50,000 for Go "string concatenation". (0.20 seconds)
Of course none of them are relevant but you can see that Go coders are going to have a much worse Signal/Noise ratio.
The only thing I don't like about the processing language is its name:
Results 1 - 10 of about 45,900 for processing "string concatenation". (0.24 seconds)
Of course it come from a long history of google silly names like 'C'
Results 1 - 10 of about 84,300 for C "string concatenation". (0.09 seconds)
Microsoft wasn't very smart here: .net "string concatenation". (0.30 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 157,000 for
Sun was better
Results 1 - 10 of about 70,600 for Java "string concatenation". (0.19 seconds)
Now we're talking:
Results 1 - 10 of about 7,050 for fortran "string concatenation".
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,230 for cobol "string concatenation".
Of course those last two are much less popular languages but the S/N ratio of the pages you get when you search google for that is very high.
Google should have a naming contest for their new language. Come up with something unique like zarking00g
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
to call a stop. Or a stop!
while $STOP; HAMMERTIME; end
Re: (Score:2)
while $STOP { // Credit where due [xkcd.com]
collaborate();
listen();
}
Re: (Score:2)
if (exists(town{"Der Kommissar"})) {
exit
} else {
@ARRAY = reverse @ARRAY;
}
Re:Perfect example (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no IP.
There is copyright, patents and trademarks. This sounds like a trademark thing, so no need to confuse the issue.
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I think the issue here is more akin to trademarks rather than IP.
I think your post is more an issue of words than of text. Intellectual Property is an umbrella term combining trademarks, copyright, and patents. Even without a registered trademark, I think they'd have a good case that Google is trying to pass off their new language as the original Go.
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Even without a registered trademark, I think they'd have a good case that Google is trying to pass off their new language as the original Go.
Actually, unregistered trademarks are valid, too. In North America, the trademark system is a "first to use" system, not a "first to file".
However, the original Go is not a commercial product, so there is no trademark issue. Google will likely consider changing the name just because it's stupid to create a new programming language and give it the same name as an existing one, but trademark won't enter into the discussion.
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I always thought one had to register a trademark for it to be valid. I thought the the (tm) mark was for pending trademarks. It looks like I was wrong. [ehow.com]
I think the whole fighting over the "go" name is stupid. Seriously, what kind of idiot would think no one used such a commonly used word, especially since most people would equate a programming language with an action. (Yeah, and someone actually used the word "Action!" as the name of their programming language [wikipedia.org].)
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where are you googling? the only thing on the first page is the "Go!" wikipedia article which was created yesterday, AFTER Google launched their language
Re:Non-issue (Score:5, Funny)
Hey it's not their fault. If only they had access to some sort of computer system that allowed one to quickly examine the internet, a "search engine" if you will, then they might have been able to catch this in time.
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Believe me, if there's at least one lawyer working for Google, they knew. Even most start-ups research a product name before announcing it. They probably just figured they could pay the guy off.
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Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps Mr. McCabe should have trademarked the name???
Simply using the name in a commercial capacity is enough to get an unregistered trademark. However, the problem is that he is not selling the Go! programming language. If it's not a commercial entity, then trademark doesn't apply.
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DMCA is not an issue, since this is a question of trademark, not copyright.
It seems to me that the only way McCabe could be legally forced to change the name is if trademark law applied, but if trademark law applied, then the mark would be his, since trademark law is "first to use", not "first to file".
Legal questions aside, if Google keeps using the name, then McCabe will have to change his name not for legal reasons, but practical ones.
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I'm not sure why you think selling something is a pre-requisite for being able to trademark its name. What is key is that you use the trademark on an ongoing basis and are the first to use it in a particular field.(Amongst other things). Even if you freely give something away you can still trademark its name; all a trademark does is identify a particular product and prevents others with similar products from trading on your good (or bad) name. Google, for example gives away many services for free yet can still own the rights to Google as a servicemark or trademark; depending on whether you consider search a service or a good.
I didn't say he had to be selling it, I said he had to be using it in a commercial capacity. Trademark applies to, well, trade. I might use a certain nickname on an ongoing basis in a particular field, but that doesn't mean I automatically get a trademark on that nickname. It would have to be a mark of trade in order for it to be trademarkable.
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Maybe it's time for tougher IP laws where such things would be possible! At least I would if I were into politics...
Re:'GO' != 'GO!' (Score:4, Informative)
A+ != A# != A# C != C# (in fairness they are related) There are several languages refereed to as D F != F# L != L# M != M4
If you can't tell the difference between to similarly named programming languages perhaps programming isn't for you!
But C# = Db F = E# and moreover B# = C
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Because Googling for "go" gets you 2,950,000,000 hits. Yes, that's billions. And yet they didn't see that choosing such a common word for a language name was a bad idea. Ah, how the mighty goof up.