Google to Listen In? Firm Buys Listen.in

Firm purchases Listen.in domain name.

Google has made a curious domain buyout — Listen.in.

Technically it’s an Indian country code domain name, so perhaps we ought to just ignore the obvious phrase “Listen In”.

But it’s more fun if you don’t ignore it.

What’s Google up to? The firm does have a product called Google Listen that’s in Google Labs. Oh, and there were those apparent plans to “listen in” to your computing environment.

Of course there’s the fresh Google music service as well, and this would be a nifty name for it when it rolls out generally.

Still, I find it hard to believe the firm would bank a fresh product on a local ccTLD like .in. The firm hasn’t been big on buying generic or even “cute” domains like this in the past.

Listen.in used to be a social music service based in Canada.

What do you think?

[Update: see comments, Ross states the got this domain when they purchased PushLife. It was still in an individual’s name until it just changed hands.]