UberSucks.com expired and Uber scooped it up.
It’s been a rough couple of months for ride-hailing company Uber.
First, there was the confused reaction to its messaging after President Trump’s initial immigration order. Then there were questions about its culture and sexual harassment. Later, a video surfaced of CEO Travis Kalanick arguing with a driver. Finally, there was the revelation of Uber’s “Greyball” program for circumventing regulators.
Given all of these issues, the company no doubt is fighting a lot of people that say Uber sucks. So, some good news for the company: as of this week it now owns UberSucks.com.
The domain name has quite a bit of history.
It was registered back in 2010 and displayed a simple web page that merely said: No it Doesn’t 😉
The domain name expired and was registered by someone else in January 2016. That person (who used Whois privacy) created a site for aggrieved Uber drivers:
That person let the domain name expire earlier this year. The domain was registered at BlueHost, which has a partnership for expired domains with GoDaddy.
As best I can tell, Uber’s brand protection domain name registrar MarkMonitor interceded to get the domain name at the end of the expiration cycle. (The domain name’s Whois record currently shows BrandCertified as the registrant. That’s one of MarkMonitor’s companies.)
Oh, and it case you are wondering…Uber also owns Uber.sucks.
clasione says
Looks like they also picked up uber.sucks just in case. http://whois.domaintools.com/uber.sucks – Whaat’s happening with .sucks anyway, there seems to be lots of premiums available for 24-bucks.
domainboxio says
Off topic: .sucks seems to be destined to fail. I do not understand the logic behind this TLD, especially after having read https://domainnamewire.com/2017/03/07/much-costs-run-domain-name-registry/
Who is responsible for .sucks anyway?
clasione says
Vox Populi Registry.
I think it pretty crazy to have approved the creation of this domain; its not going to be used for anything which reflect on the domain industry positively and does appear to blend well with this article which basically refers to it as a clown show: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2015/06/29/saga-of-sucks-domain-generates-laughter-agony/
Anticareer says
So they were able to purchase this before it hit auction? Nice to know GoDaddy skirts their process for some.
Ron says
How did they circumvent the drop process? Uber gift card?
Edward Dalton says
This is weird. I just created a blog called ubersucks.blogspot.com
This may or may not get off the ground.
The fact is I Googled this about a week ago expecting someone to have already done it.
Nobody did.
So I jumped right in.
Edward Dalton