{"id":64690,"date":"2012-11-14T13:25:32","date_gmt":"2012-11-14T11:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=64690"},"modified":"2012-11-14T13:47:37","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T11:47:37","slug":"sa-man-threatened-by-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/64690-sa-man-threatened-by-google.html","title":{"rendered":"SA man threatened by Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internet giant Google<\/a> is threatening to sue a young entrepreneur from Middelburg in Mpumalanga because his website has a similar name, Beeld reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Andries Maree, 23, owns domain name Doogle.co.za<\/a>, a website that allows employment seekers to upload their particulars free of charge.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He taught himself software and programming skills by “playing around on websites”.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

Maree’s lawyer, Emmie de Kock, said they did not agree with Google, and were deciding how to proceed.<\/p>\n

“This is a possible David and Goliath battle,” she said.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h3>\n

Google pays for \u201cmobster\u201d defamation<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Internet freedom in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Google Free Zone targets \u201cnext billion users\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Google privacy policy creates \u201chigh risks\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A South African man faces a lawsuit threat from Google after launching his own website, Doogle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":64692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[16932,167,35],"class_list":["post-64690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-doogle","tag-google","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64690"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64694,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64690\/revisions\/64694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}