Google TiSP a blatant rip-off

I don't like to brag, but back in the early 1990s, I invented DSL, or Digital Sewer Line. You know DSL as something different today, but that's only because I licensed the rights to the name for a tidy sum, thank-you very much.

Now along comes Google - completely unbeknownst to me - with its beta announcement this morning of TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider. From the press release:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 1, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the launch of Google TiSP (BETA), a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users' plumbing systems. The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.

And people accuse Microsoft of being rip-off artists. ... As Mr. T would say, I pity the fool who messes with my intellectual property.

The IETF will back my claim, by the way, and you can read about that kind of background information here and in a story Network World did two years ago about the standards organization's work on such matters.And, of course, I am hardly alone in being so victimized. This site has a great compilation of such flimflam through the ages.

(Update: The audacity continues ... there's even a Google Group on this TiSP business.)

(Update 2: USA Today is running the Associated Press version of the story, which makes no mention of my "prior art.")

(Update 3: At least this account uses in the headline my all-time favorite word for toilet.)

(Update 4, Monday, 5 a.m.: I see that Google has removed the offending link on its homepage, perhaps signaling an awareness of my claim. Still calling the lawyers this morning, though.)

(Update 5: At least the headline writers were having fun: “Potty joke” … “Flush with Fools’ fun” … “Google plumbs ‘Net services” … “Google resorts to toilet humor” … “Google ‘crappy’ at last” … you get the idea.) 

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