Google lawyers sent the site a cease-and-desist letter, received Sunday, claiming that Goojje infringes on Google’s rights and trademark by imitating the latter’s logo
The founder of a Chinese knockoff of Google is denying allegations of copyright infringement, and vowed Monday not to bow to pressure from the Internet search engine giant.
The relatively new search engine and social networking site, called Goojje, is growing in popularity. As a result, Google lawyers sent the site a cease-and-desist letter, received Sunday, claiming that Goojje infringes on Google’s rights and trademark by imitating the latter’s logo, which could mislead users into thinking the sites are related.
Goojje’s chief founder, who goes by the pseudonym Xiao Xuan, told the Global Times Monday that Google’s allegations are "unimaginable," because people who understand Chinese know of the difference between the two sites.
Xiao has refused to give his real name, but he said his site will resort to legal action if necessary to protect its so-called rights. Xiao is a 2008 university graduate who studied media and printing.
His site’s name is a play on words. "Goo" represents the name, while "jje" sounds similar to "elder sis-ter" in Chinese, or "jiejie." Put together, they mean "sister Goo." Whereas the Chinese name for Google sounds like "brother Goo."
Goojje launched on January 14 – one day after Google threatened to pull out of China after claiming that hacking attempts were launched against its e-mail servers. Goojje has been criticized as a knockoff of both Google and Baidu, as Goojje’s logo is sort of a hybrid of the two biggest search en-gines in China.
When Goojje launched, it ran a message under its logo saying, "The brother is leaving … but the sister will be missing him." But after Google decided to stay, Goojje changed its message to "The brother stayed for the sister."
Wu Mengyi, a legal specialist with Baidu, told the Global Times Monday that Baidu is aware of goojje.com and its logo’s resemblance to Baidu’s. But she said the company had no intention to take action against Goojje.
It’s short lifespan notwithstanding, Goojje’s popularity as a website, according to ratings by the Alexa Web information company, put it at 11,073rd worldwide and 496th domestically. The site boasted 60,000 registered users as of Thursday, when Xiao said hackers started trying to access goojje.com.
"Since February 4, sophisticated unidentified hackers have been trying to attack the site over three days, and users couldn’t register any more," Xiao told the Global Times. The team has reported the hacking to the police. Xiao wouldn’t speculate on the source.
The site was inaccessible as of 6 pm Monday, a sign that it was still being attacked, Xiao said. It became accessible again around 8 pm, after Xiao’s team redirected goojje.com to another domain name, dierqi.com.
Goojje is independently financed and run by eight college students, including Xiao.
Shortly after the site was established, it received advertising offers from taobaolianmeng.cn, with a preliminary offer of 1 million yuan. The site has also had investment offers of up to 10 million yuan, Xiao said.
"But we refused all these offers. We don’t want to commercialize the website too early," Xiao said. He said all of his partners are working for the website for free, and they have been able to bear the daily operating costs so far.
Goojje is mainly an interactive online community where users exchange ideas and interact, while the search engine is only a minor service of the site, Xiao said, adding that his site will launch a new program soon after the Chinese New Year, allowing users to produce and share original short plays.
"The big brother is bullying the sister," a Goojje fan nicknamed Shenshibumie told the Global Times. "Google has overreacted, for a worldwide search engine giant could not tolerate a newborn website that does not focus on search services."
Google had no comment Monday.
Chinese blog portal Bokee (blogchina.com) founder and CEO Fang Xingdong said he wasn’t optimistic about the site’s survival, despite Xiao’s ambition to "build Goojje into an international engine."
"I don’t believe Goojje will survive long. It’s likely that these college students set up the site for fun. If they mean to be serious, it would cost a lot of cash and need advanced technology to support the website," he said.
The site’s increasing popularity comes as a so-called shanzhai culture is sweeping across the country. From electronic products such as mobile phones and MP3s to Web designs, shanzhai, or look-alikes, can be seen everywhere.
Apart from Goojje, there are a dozen of shanzhai search engines in China. They go by names such as Baigou, Baiguhu and Baihugu, resembling Google, Baidu and Yahoo.
An imitation site of YouTube also emerged after Google’s threat to exit China. YouTubecn.com offers videos from the real YouTube, owned by Google. The site was down Monday.
Although there are great similarities in names and appearances, most shanzhai products are low-cost and of poor quality.
But concern is also raised that the shanzhai culture, by nature, represents infringements of intellectual property rights.
Wang Tingwei, a lawyer specializing in cyber piracy at the Beijing Haiming Law Firm, told the Global Times that whether Goojje has committed trademark infringement depends on whether Goojje’s logo would indeed mislead Web users, and on how much Goojje’s logo overlaps with Google’s.
"If the design of Goojje’s logo leads Web users to believe that it is a franchisee or joint venture of Google, Goojje will be held responsible for trademark infringement," he said.
But he admitted that, like all Internet-related cases, it’s hard to obtain evidence because all the users are virtual.
"The Goojje site is pretty harmless. The real risk is when … other search engines in China end up using stolen code from Google to compete against Google in the marketplace," an article published on Itworld.com stated
责任编辑：sealion1986
