Google wants us to change our name from 9to5Google (Update: We’re back!)

Update: A Google rep now tells us:

Our Policy Team has taken another look at this and decided to reinstate ad serving to your site. No further action is needed.

Please reach out if you still have any issues with ads on your site.

So we’re back..for now – but obviously we’re exposed and it might make sense to make a change anyway. Stay tuned. 

Some big site news everyone! At around noon today, our ads stopped working. They run through both Google’s Doubleclick/Ad Exchange network and Adsense. We’ve had a long and fruitful relationship with Google’s ads department, so when these type of issues do come up every few months, a few panicked calls and emails to the account rep of the moment can fix things. (And because our network does well into 6 figures/month, if we are vigilant we usually get to talk to a human!)

But this time was different. We have learned that Google’s Public Policy Team has decided that, after 5 years of publishing under the 9to5Google name, we have been violating their trademark. Sure we’re on Google+, News, Apps, Ads and just about everything else Google as 9to5Google but I guess something changed.

We are a news site dedicated to covering Google, not trying to masquerade as Google, so we’re appealing this decision (and if you know anyone at Google please have them run this up the ladder). But there is a big chance we’ll have to change our name. Obviously we’ll do a redirect so you can enter 9to5google.com in your browser and shouldn’t have to update your bookmarks feeds or Twitter or anything.

In the meantime, if we do have to change our name, what should we change our name to? 9to5G.com is probably the easiest. But perhaps we should embrace the bigger company name: 9to5Alphabet.com. Obviously that has the same risks. We could also just reduce ourselves to as few of characters as possible with 925.co? Or maybe we lose the 9to5 and go 24/7? You tell us!

Excerpted sad email from account rep follows: (more…)

Filed under: Google Corporate