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My Africa Today

• November 28, 2007
• Google, Yahoo Sued For Stealing Names From Tanzanian Tribes

  Posted: November 28th, 2007, 12:35am EST

  If you liked our report on the bizarre handwritten lawsuit against Google from a guy worried that his social security number was too similar to Google's name, here's another one for you. Once again, special thanks to Eric Goldman for passing this one on. This time, at least, most of the lawsuit is typed (there are some handwritten parts at the end), though, there are numerous typos. The lawsuit is being filed against both Google and Yahoo by a guy who is apparently being detained by Immigration services in Houston. He claims that both Google and Yahoo stole their names from Tanzanian tribes -- and now they should pay up. Specifically, he claims that Google took its name from the Gogo tribe and Yahoo took its name from the Yao tribe. Conveniently, this guy happens to be a descendant of both tribes. He's merely asking for both companies to pay $10,000 each to every member of both tribes, going back three generations. Simple!
  
  While it is true that many companies are using foreign words (Swahili is especially popular) in choosing company and product names (Kijiji, Joomla, Renkoo, Wiki, Tafiti, Jambo, etc.), both Google and Yahoo have pretty well-documented histories of their names, and the names of these Tanzanian tribes clearly have nothing to do with either one. Not that the guy doesn't try: "The court is now been asked to answer a common sense question: Is "Google" much more related, semantically and lexically, with "Gogo" or with "Googol"?" Once again, the chance of this lawsuit getting anywhere is basically nil (even if they had taken their names from the tribes, which they clearly did not), but as Goldman points out to us: "There is, of course, a serious problem here about the courts getting clogged up with lawsuits brought by prisoners/detainees with too much time on their hands and nothing to do but file lawsuits, and companies having to spend money to stomp out these lawsuits." In the meantime, this seems mighty close to life imitating The Onion।
  
  
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