Facebook hi-jacked generic technical words that had pre-existing meanings:
- “Meta”, which previously defined an abstraction of something about that thing, often referred to as “metadata” in tech jargon (data about the data).
- “Threads”, which previously defined a tree of related commentary.
Twitter hi-jacked:
- “X”, which previously symbolized a conventional variable/placeholder.
Google hi-jacked:
- “Gemini”, which previously referred to an emerging new protocol that actually frees people from abuses by the tech industry by creating a web of documents, not apps. It started in 2019 and Google already sabotaged the new protocol for not serving Google by naming their AI chatbot “Gemini”.
This creates confusion and complexity in conversations. It forces corporate branding into our subconscious in a manipulative way by the mere act of thinking about generic concepts. You cannot speak of /threads/ anymore without Facebook’s product interfering or benefiting. It also sabotages free world technology by cluttering top search results with irrelevant garbage. A search for “Gemini” in /any/ search service is now dominated with Google’s AI chatbot.
If you want to search the web for “Gemini”, now you must use this query string:
gemini -google -ai -chatbot -site:google -site:google.com -deepmind
(edit) Cloudflare also hi-jacked “Cloud Firewall”, which was originally the name of a Firefox plugin that helps you detect and avoid tech giant websites (including Cloudflare). CF named one of their own services “Cloud Firewall” to bury search results linking to a tool to avoid CF.
So, new rule:
If a corporation/legal person wants to trademark a generic word that’s already in use in a technical context, or even use it for a different purpose without trademarking, they must contribute us$ 250 million to repair the damage to the language. They must hire an impartial NGO to develop new branding and use clever catchy wordsmithing to remedy their damage. The corporation behind the hi-jack cannot be involved in the technology behind whatever they hi-jacked.
The purpose of trademarks is to mitigate confusion in the marketplace. But now that we have corporations using trademarks in a way that creates confusion and ultimately smothers their branding on language outside the marketplace, trademark has a problem in its current implementation.
I wouldn’t call this is a trademark protection¹ proposal; it’s a trademark limitation. Meta was never trademarked before FB sabotaged the word. In any case, I don’t see a fix mentioned in your comment. A technology called Gemini was founded in 2019 that threatens Google’s reach, who does not benefit from people using a web alternative that’s less conducive to surveillance advertising. So Google steals the name for their own branding. How does that benefit the public interest?
¹ w.r.t copyright, all creators get an automatic copyright without registration. What registration gives them is a bit of proof that could be useful in litigation. I don’t know if trademarks respect the same concept but apparently not. There is significant proof that Gemini was used in 2019 but whatever non-profit entity produced it, they apparently did not register a trademark. That’s part of the problem. Perhaps non-profits should get gratis trademark registration service.
Trademarks outside of direct brand/company names used exclusively in commercial market places provide no social benefit and should be banned entirely.
Yeah it is shitty when companies use common terms and flood the conversation but expanding trademark rights creates more problems than solutions.
And in Gemini's case, it may have accidentally prevented an Eternal September for the smolNet. It isn't going to go away and slow growth will enable its cultural values to be better preserved.