The king of toothpaste, soap, and household cleaners has backed away from its demand that a small, noncommercial Web site change its domain name.
Benjamin Kite, co-founder of Ajax.org, is convinced that an Internet campaign -- which threatened a boycott of Colgate-Palmolive products -- brought the consumer products giant to its knees. The company said that it backed down for other reasons.
On 14 October -- the same day developer-news site slashdot.org posted a link to a petition with 1,368 signatures protesting Colgate's actions, Kite got a letter from Scott Thompson, a Colgate vice president.
That letter stated that the company had determined the domain name would not be confused with the company's Ajax trademark, thus "it will not be necessary to suspend the use of your domain name under current circumstances."
In little more than a couple of weeks, Kite received thousands of letters decrying the fact that a mighty multinational like Colgate would bear down on pint-sized ajax.org, a site created, he said, for "no commercial purposes, but rather for the free exchange of information, ideas, and cool pictures of Bill Gates dressed up like Hitler."
As Kite demanded on the Ajax Web site: "It should not be that easy, should it? A little saber rattling, and fare-thee-well Ajax.org?"
Kite and company did some saber rattling of their own after receiving the first letter from Colgate on 24 September.
"Your use of the Ajax.org domain name will dilute the significance of Colgate-Palmolive Company's trademarks and will result in consumer confusion," the letter read. It went on to threaten a possible injunction, damages, attorney's fees, and fines if Ajax.org continued to use the domain name.
"Ahoy to Ye, My Dearest Swabbie Bret [Parker, a Colgate attorney]," Kite wrote back. "I suggest that you dig up Sophocles and Ovid, and sue them, since they have written poems and plays bearing the same name."
Kite said he first learned of the Greek warrior Ajax in Latin class in high school 10 years ago. "It's been my username ever since."
Kite wrote that he had been a lifelong consumer of Colgate-Palmolive products -- which include toothpaste, laundry soap, and dog food, in addition to Ajax cleaning products -- but that he would henceforth boycott the products. Hundreds of other signers of the petition and letter writers threatened the same.
Then, last week, the corporate giant backed down.
"In an effort to be sensitive to the concerns of people involved, and upon further examination, we concluded that the current use of the ajax.org domain name would not confuse customers that the source of the Web site was Colgate-Palmolive Company," read a statement faxed to Wired News on Tuesday.
Kite has his own read on the events. "I think they caved in to bad publicity," he said. "This particular frontier is cloudy to them, though. They don't understand it the way we do."
