“CatholicGoogle” has got to be some kind of trademark violation, right?

January 3, 2009 · Posted in Everything else 

Catholic Google

I’m interested in seeing how long it takes this web site to change its name. According to the site’s disclaimer:

Catholic search engine powered by Google striving to provide an easy to use resource to anyone wanting to learn more about Catholicism and provide a safer way for good Catholics to surf the web.

CatholicGoogle is powered by Google using “safe search” technology, it produces results from all over the internet with more weighting to given to Catholic websites and eliminates the vast majority of unsavoury content, such as pornography. The site is not associated or affiliated with Google.com, we work closely with Google to help ensure that the adverts are not objectionable in nature, however, some of the results and adverts that are displayed may not be in line with Catholic doctrine and we do not endorse of any of the results or adverts displayed on Catholic Google.

Look, if you’re interested in walling off the Internet from a certain set of religiously minded patrons, that’s fine. But you can’t use the name of a company to brand your particular form of Internet censorship. Not only does CatholicGoogle use Google’s name, but they co-opt their distinctive color scheme as well.

About the only semi-original work on the entire logo is the halos, and I bet that took all of two minutes to draw upon that cliche’d visual imagery. Even if Google doesn’t come after CatholicGoogle with a platoon of lawyers – which they might not, given the inevitable PR headaches that would spur – CG should do the right thing and stop mooching on Google’s business brand.

And I’m sort of curious about this part of the CatholicGoogle search filter: “more weighting to given to Catholic websites…” Is there something inherent in “Catholic” web sites that make them more credible than “non-Catholic” web sites? Here’s the whois information for CatholicGoogle, which appears to originate from France.

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Comments

  • I received a list of sites to study and I decided that a “Catholic Search Engine” that only searched these sites would be useful. It kind of grew from there.if you’re interested in walling off the Internet from a certain set of religiously minded patrons, that’s fine.
  • Look, if you’re interested in walling off the Internet from a certain set of religiously minded patrons, that’s fine. But you can’t use the name of a company to brand your particular form of Internet censorship. Not only does CatholicGoogle use Google’s name, but they co-opt their distinctive color scheme as well.

    Thanks and Regards
  • Hi,
    I am the owner and creator of TheCatholicSearch.com, which has been around for a few years now. The way our site works is we only give search results from sites that have been submitted by our users and reviewed for Catholic content. The idea came to me during my RCIA classes. I received a list of sites to study and I decided that a “Catholic Search Engine” that only searched these sites would be useful. It kind of grew from there.

    I also should mention that the other site that you mentioned will probably get into trouble with Google. Originally TheCatholicSearch.com had a “googlish” logo and other “googlish” features. Google did not like it and shut us down for a bit until we sorted it out and changed our logo design.

    Thanks, Jereme
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