Google Buys Domain Name That’s All 26 Letters Of The Alphabet

What’s a technology giant to do when it can’t get its first choice of domain name? Go big: Alphabet, the new name of what used to be just Google, couldn’t buy alphabet.com (BMW owns it), or even abc.com (American Broadcasting Company, owned by Walt Disney Co.), so it’s gone and snagged abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com. Might as well be thorough.

When Google announced Alphabet, the company’s homepage was abc.xyz. But that just wasn’t enough, it seems: only days after Google was officially reorganized under the Alphabet umbrella, the company confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that it bought abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com.

“We realized we missed a few letters in abc.xyz, so we’re just being thorough,” an Alphabet spokesman said. Alphabet declined to say how it plans to use the domain name.

The domain name has been around since 1999, according to domain-registration directory Whois. It’s unclear whether Alphabet will use it for anything or just keep ownership of the domain to prevent others from buying it. As of Thursday morning, that page wasn’t loading.

Now Alphabet Has All 26 Letters [Wall Street Journal]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist