The X?: Google Self-Driving Car

Google’s .car domain name registrations are more interesting than Apple’s.

Everyone got in a tizzy a couple weeks ago regarding Apple registering .car domain names. This was stupid since Apple registers its brands in just regarding every fresh domain name that comes out.

Google does the same — it registered Adsense.car, Alphabet.car and Google.car, among others.

But it also registered a few generic/descriptive domains in .car, .cars and .auto. It registered SelfDriving.car, Self-Driving.car, Driverless.car, and the branded GoogleSelfDriving.car.

Of course, we know that Google is working on robot-driven cars. But what do you make of this one:

X.car /.cars/.auto

Is it possible Google’s car will be the Google X? Or the X car? Or maybe it will sell its software as X? (It’s worth noting that Tesla’s fresh SUV is called the Model X.)

It’s a peculiar registration.

Update: As pointed out in the comments, X is also a “brand” for Google. They also have registered other domains with X.TLD, so this points to a potential brand registration motivation.