Comment by jodrellblank

I think it's a coincidence, not an evil plot. Gemini is new but not confidential - niche, little used, never likely to be a real competitor, I agree with that. I don't think it being a common word is relevant - there are lots of common words they could use.

But particularly Google claim to organize the world's information. And right now they are claiming to be good at AI. And search. And they claim to be trying to do some kind of moral/ethical good on top - i.e. going out of their way not to cause harm, and to cause improvement. If any group on Earth had the skills and technologies to pick a name which wouldn't clash with anything, with smart people, language analysis and AI and all the world's data, it should be Google.

And instead they've landed right slap bang on the name of a competitor!

Isn't that amusing?

I wonder if there's any other name they could have called it which would coincidentally damage a small competitor in a way that has plausible deniability ("it's a common word" - they obviously couldn't call it "Yahoo! Mail" or "Baidu") and little pushback?