Microsoft has owned other brand name domain names before.
There was quite a bit of buzz recently when Microsoft registered a couple domain names including the Sony brand name.
A merger? A phone product? Video games?
While certainly newsworthy, often times these types of registrations are just defensive registrations. The company wants to register a domain name before a cybersquatter does.
In fact, both of the domains in question, sony-microsoft.com and microsoft-sony.com, had been registered to someone in China a year ago, according to historical whois records.
Here’s another example of what was probably a defensive registration: applemsn.com.
Microsoft doesn’t own the domain name now, but it did back in 2008. It got the domain name from a difference company that registered it earlier in the year, perhaps by sending a cease and desist letter to the owner. It let the domain name lapse in 2010, and it was just registered to another person in China on Monday.
Was Microsoft looking to do a deal with Apple for MSN? Probably not. It just didn’t want someone else owning the domain name.
Jamie says
I broke the Sony-Microsoft story 8:14 am on July 14 😉 but your not the only one that linked to other stories after people read mine. Just thought a fellow domainer would help another out 🙂
Just giving you a hard time Andrew, I know it’s hard to tell sometimes who broke a story and who to reference.
Andrew Allemann says
Jamie, didn’t know that, congrats. Post the link here and I’ll also put it in the story.
Jamie says
http://www.dotweekly.com/are-sony-and-microsoft-teaming-up-sony-microsoft-com