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7seven7

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 19, 2009
28
0
~/
I thought it was pretty funny. Going to http://www.windowssucks.com/ redirects to a Bing search for "windows sucks". I checked the whois, and Microsoft does indeed own windowssucks.com. If only it redirected to their Vista page :D
 

YS2003

macrumors 68020
Dec 24, 2004
2,138
0
Finally I have arrived.....
That's funny. They know what names they need to take before someone does.:) When you are making some products which leverage their market share in spite of their product qualities, I fully understand those names are taken.
 

lag1090

macrumors 6502
Jan 28, 2007
280
0
NJ
The dude owns "f***apple.com" let that "for sale" page was clearly made in iWeb.

The page's source code confirms it:

<meta name="Generator" content="iWeb 3.0.1" />
<meta name="iWeb-Build" content="local-build-20090415" />
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=700" />
<title>This domain name is for sale.</title>
 

Gelfin

macrumors 68020
Sep 18, 2001
2,165
5
Denver, CO
lol i can see why they would buy it as they dont want someone outside their control owning it

This is it exactly. Companies routinely try inappropriately controlling criticism of their products by suing the critics for trademark violations, and courts (6th and 9th federal circuits) have slapped such companies down, correctly noting that a site called BobsWidgetsSuck is not confusingly similar to BobsWidgets, and no one in his right mind would think Bob created or endorsed the site.

All Bob can do is purchase BobsWidgetsSuck ahead of time himself and sit on it, which a lot of companies do these days. If Bob is well-known enough, he can likely rely on domain squatters to buy the domain and sit on it, which accomplishes the same thing.

The squatters are actually playing a pretty dumb game. They think Bob is going to be so desperate to keep somebody else from using BobsWidgetsSuck that he'll pay an exorbitant price to own it himself. The only problem is that in order to cash in the squatter must charge everybody the exorbitant price; otherwise, Bob will just give a friend money to buy the domain at the non-extortionate rate and hand it over. It's rare your product can generate enough hate that somebody is willing to pay the squatter's price to get the "sucks" domain of it, so the squatter is unwittingly protecting you on his own dime just like if you bought the name yourself.
 

0098386

Suspended
Jan 18, 2005
21,574
2,908
Well they have to own it otherwise someone else might buy it, then it gets messy. This is too understandable for words!
 

rdowns

macrumors Penryn
Jul 11, 2003
27,397
12,521
Any smart company will buy names like that. I bought them for the last 2 companies I worked for.
 

Wolf Gang

macrumors newbie
Jun 22, 2009
5
0
Lol. That is pretty amusing. They do that so someone else doesn't get their hands on it.
 

MacAndy74

macrumors 65816
Mar 19, 2009
1,050
0
Australia
I nearly died laughing, but it IS true! :D
 

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