Sony-Microsoft? How Regarding Apple-MSN?

Microsoft has owned other brand name domain names ahead of.

There was quite a bit of buzz recently when Microsoft registered a couple domain names counting the Sony brand name.

A merger? A phone product? Video games?

While certainly newsworthy, often times these types of registrations are just defensive registrations. The firm wants to register a domain name ahead of a cybersquatter does.

In fact, both of the domains in question, sony-microsoft.com and microsoft-sony.com, had been registered to someone in China a year ago, as stated by historical whois records.

Here’s another example of what was probably a defensive registration: applemsn.com.

Microsoft doesn’t own the domain name now, but it did back in 2008. It got the domain name from a difference firm that registered it earlier in the year, perhaps by sending a cease and desist letter to the owner. It let the domain name lapse in 2010, and it was just registered to another person in China on Monday.

Was Microsoft looking to do a deal with Apple for MSN? Probably not. It just didn’t want someone else owning the domain name.