21.05.2014 - 00:04 [ Electronic Frontier Foundation ]

Dear Google: Parody Is Not Trademark Infringement

Say it ain‘t so, Google. Two weeks ago, the awesome activists at the Peng! Collective launched a funny and smart satirical site, google-nest.org, which purported to offer a host of new Google „products,“ pairing the launch with a public announcement at the Re:publica 2014 conference in Berlin. The spoof site included products such as Google Trust (data “insurance”), Google Bee (personal drones), Google Hug (location-based crowdsourced hug matching) and Google Bye (an online profile for the afterlife). The goal: raise awareness about Google‘s privacy policies, which Peng! believes are hypocritical. The spoof was great success, prompting a wave of commentary and coverage that recognized it for the satire that it was.