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Beeld reports that Andries Maree, 23, owns domain name Doogle.co.za, a website that allows employment seekers to upload their particulars free of charge.

Maree, who left school in Grade Eight to help support his family, lost his job two years ago.

He sold newspapers for Beeld for a while, during which time he met a lot of unemployed people, and became inspired to create a database for them.

He taught himself software and programming skills by “playing around on websites”.

On October 23, he received a warning letter from Google’s lawyers, stating that the similar-sounding name could lead people to believe there was a collaboration agreement between the two companies.

Maree has denied the accusations and said he would be happy to place a notice on his website, dissociating himself from Google.

Maree’s lawyer, Emmie de Kock, said they did not agree with Google, and were deciding how to proceed.

“This is a possible David and Goliath battle,” she said.

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Thu May 23 01:46:08 SAST 2013 ::

Nov 14, 2012

Tiron

The guy was was really not creative enough. How could he do that. I saw the website, Doogle it South Africa. He should have created his own name, not to copy others.
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Nov 14, 2012

Lehido

Google is full of kak, But sometime people just like controvercy...Why name your company with that name, you knew it'll get their back up
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Nov 14, 2012

Bavhurisi

Doogle it and google are not the same,but Maree should just change his name and give it another name not relevent to the ones that do the same service.

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Nov 14, 2012

leShandiis

- so does this mean, i cant use TOOGLE for my own website/ company

- or if push comes to a shove Maree.....you could rename it to DOOOGLE, with 3 O's
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Nov 14, 2012

Bizzabo

leShandiis

just add another o. i like that
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Nov 14, 2012

Lemtongthai

Boogle! I don't think Google stand a chance but they have enough money to pay litigation lawyers.
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Nov 14, 2012

child4real

No man I think Google should just forget about those little copiers. A beautiful things gats copied. I am proud of you Google. You do a great job.
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Nov 14, 2012

alima2000

Sound like the high school student Mike Rowe from Canada who started his own website by adding the word "soft" after his name, Mikerowesoft.com then got sued by Microsoft for infringement.
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