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Comment by ygd | Hacker News Reader

Dremel, Sawzall, what's next?

I don't know, but I wonder if this may get them in a little hot water. Both Dremel and Sawzall are trademarked.

I also don't particularly like the use of the words, I am very attached to my Dremel and I don't see how it applies to processing a database :)

Trademark restrictions are tied to the field of use.

If Google was releasing power tools and calling them Dremel, they would have a problem. But they can release a programming language called Dremel and are likely to be legally in the clear.

(Or such is my non-lawyerly understanding. I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

((The reason people say that about not legal advice is that if you give legal advice and someone gets in trouble because of it - even if the advice was correct and the person misunderstood - you are liable for the consequences of that advice.))

But these are not products. They're internal code names and there's no chance that Google will ever be releasing these pieces of software to the public. Thus no possible trademark issues.

Google Naming conventions:

Indexing Systems: Caffeine, Percolator

Database Systems: Spanner, Sawzall, Dremel

Mobile: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Haggis

Seeing 'Haggis' really brought a smile to my face. I wish it were the case but 'Honeycomb' is the name there.

You're right; this was from an old source file.

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