Google had Peng Collective remove most of the content on its site

May 21, 2014 14:15 GMT  ·  By

Google doesn’t really like getting made fun of and has demanded that a German site take down a lot of content.

The story goes like this – a couple of weeks ago, a political activist group in Germany launched a parody website making fun of Google’s products, trying to stress just how shaky the privacy issue was with this company.

Peng Collective, as the group is called, soon rejoiced as its work became successful. But Google wasn’t as happy and asked the group to revise the website and assign the domain name to Google.

“This beautiful website has been taken down, because Google is worried about their brand and the future of Nest Labs, which is in the business of making creepy products designed to collect even more data from you. Apparently they just can’t get enough, they must have it all,” the site now reads.

The spoof site is called Google Nest and includes ads for a bunch of made-up products such as Trust (a data insurance tool), Bee (personal drones to spy on you from the air), Hug (location-based crowdsourced hug matching) and Bye (online profile for the afterlife).

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit organization that defends civil liberties on the web, criticized Google over its move, claiming that Peng had every right to use the Google name and logo under the fair use doctrine.

“Unfortunately, Google's skin was not thick enough to withstand this relatively gently ribbing. The company wrote a polite note to the collective, expressing their sincere respect for political commentary—but nonetheless demanding that Peng! revise the site and assign the domain name to Google. Note to Google: polite trademark bullying is still bullying,” the EFF wrote.

Furthermore, in an email it sent to Google, the EFF defends Peng even further, telling Google that it was expecting for the company not to issue a cease and desist on the matter. “We would have expected you to take a page from Linden Labs and issue a ‘proceed and permit’ letter instead.”

The EFF also says that the site is a pure political commentary and should have been left alone. “Given the content of the site, and the ample publicity the spoof has generated, all of which recognized as satirical and parodical commentary, it is difficult to imagine that any Internet user would be confused,” the EFF states.

Regardless, what’s done is done and Google has killed a perfectly funny site.