how stupid is that!!

nice to see google making fun of it.. ridiculous... G-Mail and gmail are not the same, and they have the .com; he has the .de or whatever.......

at least they are taking it with humor, but giersch doesn't win anything (besides publicity? even if it's bad?).... and who loses: german gmail users

Absolutely ridiculous!

Hopefully they'll never get told that they have to disable @gmail.com addresses in Germany too.

You can type googlemail.com

"Hopefully they'll never get told that they have to disable @gmail.com addresses in Germany too."

Isn't that impossible?

Don't users have a country assigned to their account? If so, Google could be told to bounce any emails sent to German users. It's not likely and completely unreasonable but I wouldn't put it past them...

Its googlemail in the UK too, though gmail is not blocked.

The logo is different, and the address you register with is googlemail. I think its some stupid EU regulation rubbish. The quicker we leave that stupid organisation the better. They have no common sense

for me it workes fine. gmail.com is absolutly available from germany.

d: It's nothing to do with "EU regulation rubbish". It's because of a trademark dispute with a UK company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail#United_Kingdom

For me it works too from Germany. I set my Gmail-language and my Windows system language to English tough, don't know if it has anything to do with it.

d, it would be great if you had a clue about what you write. If it's an EU thing why does it happen only in Germany and the UK?

If a user registers in UK/Germany today and gets an @googlemail.com domain, is it still compatible with @gmail.com. Or does @gmail.com only work for pre-dispute accounts.

Paul, both addresses continue to work for new registrants. However, the default "from" address shows as the @googlemail.com variant and there's no way to change this once you've registered.

You can setup an additional email address to use the @gmail.com address in the from field in your account but this doesn't hide your @googlemail.com address and results in some email clients showing "From: usernamegmail.com on behalf of Name [usernamegooglemail.com]". More about that here:

http://blogoscoped.com/search/?q=%22sent+on+behalf+of%22

re: "Oh, and we’d like to link the URL above, but we’re not allowed to do that either. Bummer."

Ummm.... Can you elaborate please?

This is funny, I didn't realize the "Gmail Paper" April Fool's joke was making fun of the Germain "G-mail" company that sued them...

"The German naming issue is due to a trademark dispute between Google and Daniel Giersch. Daniel Giersch owns a company called "G-mail" which provides the service of printing out emails from senders and sending the print-out via postal mail to the intended recipients. On 30 January 2007, Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market ruled in favor of Giersch. It seems Google isn't without a sense of humor as this is the same service Google "offered" in the Gmail Paper April Fool's Day joke in 2007."

(via Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail)

Although I can understand that google.de would be blocked, I don't get why gmail.com (if FULLY hosted outside of germany) may not link to mail.google.com (hosted in germany probably)...

I'm located in Germany and gmail.com works fine with me. It redirects to mail.google.com as it does for quite some time.
And you still can use @gmail.com even for new accounts with the @googlemail.com TLD ...

The same for me, gmail.com is working.

Michael

Quick. Someone tell Germany and the EU about the United Nations and the process THEY have for domain name disputes.

ridiculous

Can anybody verify that a Google search for "gmail" does now return no "gmail.com" result, or better can anybody try this outside of Germany?

Michael

It is now working again for me too... I added an update.

Don't want to drive you guys crazy, but gmail isn't working from germany right now.
Gmail is blocked again and there is the same message as before. It sucks...

Still working here... at the moment, I don't get the sorry message in Germany...

Philipp, e-driven: it seems that the update of the Google web server is not yet done for all IP addresses, maybe. On my Web server I get the message as I have no DNS cache there. On my laptop I get it from time to time and at work I didn't get the message until now.

Michael

Ah, I found it...

if you get the IP 72.14.223.18 for mail.google.com, than you'll get the message. gmail.com redirects to mail.google.com/gmail. Try to set your hosts file to see the change: 72.14.223.18 mail.google.com.

To use the working IP address you have to add following line instead:
209.85.137.18 mail.google.com

Michael

Michael, that hack doesn't work for me. I never see the message. But then I'm not in Germany either, so it must (also?) be based on IP location.

Tony: yes, of course, you must have an IP address located in Germany.

Why would the message be in English?

Scjm, perhaps it's also for travelers accessing Gmail from German internet cafes... but when I checked it I also had my browser's preferred language set to English, so maybe there was some content negotiation...

Indeed, they use content negotiation... I just saw the warning again, switched my browser's preferred language to German, and then got this:

<<In Deutschland können wir keine Dienste unter Gmail anbieten. Hier nutzen wir den Namen Google Mail.

Wenn Sie in Deutschland unterwegs sind, können Sie Ihre Mails unter http: //mail.google.com abrufen.

Oh, und wir würden gerne die URL oben verlinken, dürfen das aber auch nicht. Schade.

Allgemeine Informationen zu Google erhalten Sie unter www.google.com oder www.google.de.>>

i guess it's "live" now..i got the message at work and now also at home :-(

Im getting the same message, even if Im logging from Colombia-Southamerica. I used to check my email from the UK. Am I doing something wrong?

[moved from "Gmail banned in Germany"]

After a week of frustration (I am an American living in Germany) and no
explaination for why gmail didnt work(I don't hang on blogs all day) until a nice englishman pointed me there, I found the reason lies in a court
decision.

One could fight all day about this--but would it not make sense for
google to register as a trademark "gmail.com" and than in this way
it obviates the problem?

Andy