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Apple Takes Control of 'Apple.co.uk' Domain Name

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PVisitors

macrumors 6502a
Aug 1, 2011
529
9
The guy in this thread makes a good point. I wonder why the owner of Apple.co.uk never whored his site out with ads on it. It was just the same template design which hadn't been changed since the late 90s.

Imagine all the money he would have been sitting on now after Apple bought his domain name + x years of ad revenue. I bet that site had huge traffic counts for people mistakenly going on it. I did it all the time by mistake when I knew Apple didn't own it; so imagine all the more green customers who have done it in the past.

The guy missed a trick here.
 
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Black107

macrumors regular
Jun 5, 2009
127
71
PVisitors said:
The guy in this thread makes a good point. I wonder why the owner of Apple.co.uk never whored his site out with ads on it. It was just the same template design which hadn't been changed since the late 90s.

Imagine all the money he would have been sitting on now after Apple bought his domain name + x years of ad revenue. I bet that site had huge traffic counts for people mistakenly going on it. I did it all the time by mistake when I knew Apple didn't own it; so imagine all the more green customers who have done it in the past.

The guy missed a trick here.
Click to expand...

Doing this probably would have strengthened Apple's case that it was "Name squatting" even if it wasn't. They might have been able to get it for free if he did that.
 
L

LaWally

macrumors 6502a
Feb 24, 2012
530
1
The Tech Fish said:
You can bet that Apple will be sure to really emphasise that the Galaxy Tab is just too uncool to be mistaken with an iPad :p
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Apple will look foolish if they do that.

Apple sued Samsung because they claimed the Samsung tablet was a "slavish copy" of the iPad. Parroting the judge's comment that the Samsung is "not as cool" as the iPad (and therefore not a slavish copy) will call into question Apple's ability to know cool when they see it. After all, if a judge could see it was not as cool, why couldn't Apple?
 
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petercooper

macrumors member
Jun 5, 2007
32
0
What bugs me is for years the UK Apple Store was at apple.com/ukstore then a few months ago it just started failing and now it brings up "request application was not found". Am now finally started to get used to store.apple.com/uk as the new way to go but was surprised they'd let an old easily redirectable URL drop like that.
 
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babyj

macrumors 6502a
Aug 29, 2006
586
8
Black107 said:
Doing this probably would have strengthened Apple's case that it was "Name squatting" even if it wasn't. They might have been able to get it for free if he did that.
Click to expand...

Back when there was a lot of domain squatting, more often than not when it went to court (or through the appeal process) the reason they lost was due to them doing stupid stuff. Like practically blackmailing businesses, filling with porn ads, redirects to competitors and so on.

This company used the apple.co.uk domain legitimately so there was nothing Apple could do about it. Except pay what was probably a very large sum of money to buy it. Strange it took so long though.
 
P

PVisitors

macrumors 6502a
Aug 1, 2011
529
9
Black107 said:
Doing this probably would have strengthened Apple's case that it was "Name squatting" even if it wasn't. They might have been able to get it for free if he did that.
Click to expand...

I wasn't suggesting turning it into just adverts. It was (and I'd imagine still is) a legitimate business which had a claim to the Apple domain. The point I was trying to make is that the site had NO adverts at all. He could have got away with standard or flash advertisements *spits* and made money and Apple would have still had no case as it could have easily been argued to be general adverts, albeit adverts making a lot of money giving the traffic of having http://www.apple.co.uk.
 
thekev

thekev

macrumors 604
Aug 5, 2010
7,005
3,343
Rodimus Prime said:
I am wondering that as well. Chances are the orginal owners kept turning Apple offers down and Apple knew they could not go after them for squatting on it as it was a legit domain name more than likely dating back a long time.

I would not be surprised if it was well into the 7 figure range.
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They could have tried, but it would have resulted in bad PR.

pazz said:
The previous owner of this domain was listed at an address about 15mins drive from me. So if I see a new Ferrari in the area with an appropriate Apple themed number plate I'll be able to put a name to a face.

Be interesting to know the purchase price!
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That would be really funny, but Ferraris attract a lot of negative attention as they're quite flashy.

bbeagle said:
I would think just the opposite. Apple is not known to cave - look at the Beatles albums on iTunes as leading evidence.

Apple probably offered something like substantial but not overwhelming like $250,000. It took 7 years for this guy's failed business to finally realize that he needed the money and Apple wasn't going any higher.
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You have to remember that it doesn't have to be motivated solely by what they think they can get for a name. There are certain costs and time involved in a transition when it comes to updating everything related to this. In the case of the Beatles, Apple violated their initial agreement, but it obviously wasn't foreseeable that this would ever be an issue at the time the agreement was reached. If it just wasn't worth it, they could simply reject Apple's offers indefinitely.
 
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alhedges

macrumors 6502
Oct 5, 2008
395
0
PVisitors said:
I wasn't suggesting turning it into just adverts. It was (and I'd imagine still is) a legitimate business which had a claim to the Apple domain. The point I was trying to make is that the site had NO adverts at all. He could have got away with standard or flash advertisements *spits* and made money and Apple would have still had no case as it could have easily been argued to be general adverts, albeit adverts making a lot of money giving the traffic of having http://www.apple.co.uk.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but if you are a legitimate business it's going to look pretty unprofessional if you have a bunch of ads on your site. Enough so to drive away legitimate business.
 
C

CodexMonkey

macrumors member
Feb 22, 2012
73
18
bbeagle said:
It took 7 years for this guy's failed business to finally realize that he needed the money...
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Like I say, I know the guys personally and have worked with them for many years (though not since I became an author full-time). Believe me, theirs is NOT a failed business and I don’t know why you think you have some insider knowledge that you clearly don’t. The reason they held back for so long is because they did not need the money. I had this discussion with them about three years ago. They are VERY good at what they do and make a ton of money doing it.

I really dislike it when people post comments like yours as though they’re stating fact. At least have the decency to put the words "I reckon..." at the front of your statement in the same way that I reckon you’re an idiot.
 
r0k

r0k

macrumors 68040
Mar 3, 2008
3,611
75
Detroit
I went to it today when I read Apple was being forced to put up some sort of disclaimer about Samsung didn't really copy their design for the iPad. I was hoping to see the disclaimer there but alas it wasn't there.

I typed apple.co.uk and got redirected to http://www.apple.com/uk. It never occurred to me Apple didn't own apple.co.uk all along. :eek:
 

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unlinked

macrumors 6502a
Jul 12, 2010
698
1,217
Ireland
CodexMonkey said:
I really dislike it when people post comments like yours as though they’re stating fact. At least have the decency to put the words "I reckon..." at the front of your statement in the same way that I reckon you’re an idiot.
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99% of what people post on the internet is completely uninformed by fact.
 
mac 2005

mac 2005

macrumors 6502a
Apr 1, 2005
782
126
Chicago
I've been a member of this site for 7 years, and I'm only tempted now to say this: How is this Page 1 "news"? A) It's not a "rumour" (UK spelling) and B) It's not newsworthy.

For an interesting discussion of who gains control of a .whatever address, check out nissan.com vs. nissanusa.com.
 
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ade2bee

macrumors regular
Dec 13, 2009
168
0
no negs

Where the negative comments 'box/selection' ... can't stand critisism in your nice site eh?... or are we not allowed to criticise in this newly developing nanny/police state
 
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