14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft seems very keen to continue its war with long-time rival Google, this time with a trademark application that could block the Mountain View-based search company from calling its new rendering engine “Blink.”
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past two weeks or so, Google recently announced that it would abandon WebKit and make the move to its very own rendering engine that might be called Blink.
Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be too interested in Google’s new technology, but only in the name it plans to use, as the company has recently applied for the “Blink” trademark at the USPTO, according to a report by TNW.
“But why?” you may ask. The reason is pretty simple. Microsoft tries to kill two birds with one stone.
First of all, the Windows maker already owns an application called Blink and capable of “capturing a burst of images before you even press the shutter, and continues to capture pictures after you’ve taken your shot,” as Microsoft said.
Basically, the app is supposed to help the user take the perfect shot, thus removing camera shake and focusing on the main elements of a photo.
As you may guess, Microsoft is probably trying to protect its app with a trademark, just to make sure that Google won’t do the same thing with its new rendering engine. The funny thing is that Blink (Microsoft’s Blink) is a Microsoft Research project, and the Redmond-based software vendor rarely applies for trademarks for concept software tools.
Second of all, Microsoft might very well try to simply force its rival use a different name for the new engine, just because it… oh well, can.
Microsoft and Google are yet to release comments on the matter, but don’t expect the software giant to admit that it wanted to steal Google’s right of using the name.