Booble For Porn Before Google's Lawyers Show Up

from the this-won't-last-long... dept

Well, I'm almost surprised that no one had come up with this before - but an unnamed internet executive who was joking around with his web development team somehow got to wondering why there was no good "porn search engine" online. There's Google, of course, which offers to exclude pornographic images - but not the other way around. So, these guys went ahead and built their own porn engine, and came up with the wonderful name Booble. The design might look a little familiar, and I imagine that Google's lawyers might not let the site stick around very long.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    dorpus, 20 Jan 2004 @ 5:19pm

    Like yawoo.com?

    There used to be a Japanese site called yawoo that was all porn and controversial topics, but nowadays it gets rerouted to yahoo.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2004 @ 9:40pm

    there was a guy who didn't pay his bills

    who had a search engine he called crazyrabbit.com

    The lack of bill paying is why a cyber-squatter has that name now.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    SAB, 4 Feb 2004 @ 11:02am

    Google vs. Booble: Parody or Publicity Stunt

    I don�t think he was joking around. I think it was a well planned and executed, but sleazy, publicity stunt. .
    Designed with a striking resembleance to Google, a new pornography search engine was launched on January 20. Booble.com was hit with so much traffic just 24 hours after its launch that its servers went down temporarily, trying to serve over 100,000 requests. How was this �marketing success� achieved?
    Remember MikeRoweSoft vs Microsoft. Microsoft conceded that it may have taken its trademark rights �a little too seriously� in pursuing the 17-year-old Canadian high school student and settled amicably. The settlement followed a crush of international publicity, much of it casting Microsoft as Goliath vs. Rowe as David, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of visitors to MikeRoweSoft.com.
    One week later, Booble appears sending press releases positioning itself to be the David in a fight against Google, which it claims it merely wants to parody.
    But Booble�s founder is no Mike Rowe. Booble�s founder has an established sister porn site, Sir Rodney.com. Mike Rowe was also not earning money from everyone of click as Booble/SirRodney does. Unlike Mike Rowe, Booble�s founder is too embarrassed to give his name because he does not want to be associated with porn, while at the same time mocking Google for not wanting to be associated with his porn.
    I have never been a fan of large companies over aggressively enforcing their trademark rights a position I have stated in my eBook on business domain names, at seemly.com. But in this case, it�s likely that Booble intentionally got itself into this trademark mess for the publicity and is a disgrace to legitimate trademark difficulties such as MikeRoweSoft.
    A harmless publicity stunt? Not to Google�s image or legal costs.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Sunil, 28 Dec 2011 @ 7:22am

    L

    Sunil

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.