Reglikedomain industry desk

Google Launches Google Places 6 Days Following Winning GooglePlaces.com Domain

Google won GooglePlaces.com domain 6 days ago.

Did Google wait to rebrand its Local Business Center to Google Places until it had won rights to the domain name GooglePlaces.com?

On March 2 the firm filed a complaint with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name GooglePlaces.com through Uniform domain-name Dispute Resolution Policy. The domain was owned by “Network Service” in California, with a registered owner named only “Anthonny”.

The National Arbitration Forum panel found in favor of Google on April 14, ordering that the domain name be transferred to Google.

It’s clear that Google has been working on this rebranding for a while, and it’s possible that it waited to rebrand until it won the (admittedly easy) case. But then again, Google doesn’t yet have control of the domain name as the transfer can take up to 10 days. In fact, if you type in GooglePlaces.com right now you’ll land on a parked page.

It makes me wonder — if you went through the trouble of getting the domain name through arbitration, why not wait just a few more days until you get the domain in your control ahead of rebranding?

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