Google Inc. is finding the Chinese namesake of its Gmail service playing hard-to-get. According to an insider report, the US Internet business giant has recently approached ISM again, the Beijing-based Internet firm owning www.gmail.cn, with an offer to acquire the Chinese domain name. But ISM has offered no comment yet, saying it did not understand the situation clearly.

Google had first approached ISM in August 2004 soon after its Gmail service was launched in the US. The negotiations made no progress and Google soon abandoned the matter. Recently, Google contacted ISM about the Web address gmail.cn and its logo issue, but got no positive response. There is as yet no sign that Google will sue. Sources said that cquiring the Chinese domain name has now become priority for Google because of rapid growth in the Chinese market and Google's own Gmail service attracting record number of subscribers each year.

ISM said it had registered its own service on August 1, 2003, eight months before Google's Gmail which was registered on April 1, 2004.  The two services have many things in common besides the domain name: the choice of colors in the logo are strikingly similar; even the sign-in page is similarly uncluttered. Gmail is a free email service and the technology behind it was developed at a cost of $2.5 million. ISM had planned to charge for the service, later, when user numbers had grown, but the plans had to be shelved after Google began to offer its Gmail service free.

ISM's Gmail is currently a bilingual service offering emails in two languages: English and a simplified version of Chinese, with plans to add traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and at least 45 more languages. It now has more than 300,000 users, an ISM spokesperson said. On its Web site www.ism.net.cn, ISM Technologies claims to be the largest wholesale Internet domain registrar accredited with Chinese government-backed Internet body CNNIC.

For Google, the situation isn't a new one. In Europe it has had to resort to legal action against other services which used the Gmail domain name. In this case however, the only option before Google is to make a formal offer to buy the domain name from the Chinese company because their registration for the Gmail service predates its own.

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