So what happened?

Did anyone hear anything about the “re-branding” of googlereseller.com.sg to clicktrue.com.sg?

Apparently, the people at HWZ who came up with the new site did not say why the name change. The announcement was simply…

“With this re-branding, it hopes to strengthen itself as a leading service provider of Pay Per Performance online advertising.”

Google Trademark Infringement

Do you think a subsidiary of a public listed company in Singapore just go spend ten of thousand of dollars to “re-brand” with no good reason. Afterall, googlereseller.com.sg is a keyword rich domain name and the domain name alone is worth thousands in the domain name aftermarket.

Here’s the old screenshot of www.googlereseller.com.sg:

I guess it was more likely that SPH got a lawyer letter from Google for trademark infringement. Indeed, it was a sneaky, rotten deed for a company to blatantly use another company name in the domain name and profit from it.

Google has a team of lawyers going around sending nasty letters to owners whose domains consist of word/words related to Google, Adwords, Adsense and so on.

Why It Was Not A Genuine Re-Branding Exercise?

HWZ has been using googlereseller.com.sg since May 2006 and building its brand even before SPH paid S$7.1 million to acquire Hardware Zone.

Being a search marketing company, I am sure they realize the important of protecting their website search engine visibility. Unfortunately, just 2 pages were left in Google search index.

GoogleReseller.com.sg cached page showing the pricing of Adwords campaign packages.

Also, there are existing links from other websites still pointing to www.googlereseller.com.sg. A proper re-branding exercise will need at least 6 months to switch over to the new URL and allow time for the permanent re-direction of www.google.com.sg to the new www.clicktrue.com.sg to take effect.

Google took over the domain and killed website. All the time and effort invested by HWZ team over the past years is now wasted and a loss to SPH.

So what’s your take on this fiasco?

Write your thoughts in the comment box below.