Microsoft Gets XBox Name

chewy_fruit_loop writes "The humorous situation Microsoft found itself in a few months ago regarding the X-Box name already belonging to someone, has been settled. The BBC are reporting it here ,and XBox Technologies have this press release. I wonder how much that cost Microsoft ;-)" Apparently The corporation formerly known as XBox is located like a half hour from here. Congrats guys! I expect to see you in shiny ferarris sometime soon.

Comments

win/win/win situation

[joq]

Not only did they probably make off with a hefty payment, but after looking at their company, I can't determine what the heck XBoxTechnologies actually does, so if they were headed for FuckedCompany.com, they could use the publicity of their name to actuall do something since their page lists squat other than some broad description of nothing.

Surprisingly no one is in an uproar type of posting mood claiming MS is bullying someone, so we all win here by not having to read the redundancies.

Way to applaud XBox Tech for domain squatting.

[dave-fu]

Working for a start-up way back when (May-ish 1998), we decided that "XBox" would be the perfect name for our product (NDAs live on post-mortem, yadda yadda yadda). So I do the whois, find out they're registered, port scan them (is that legal anymore?) and find out there's not a single service up and running on their webserver.
I get in touch with the domain contacts and ask them if they'd be willing to part with the domain, seeing as how they're not doing anything with it.
To paraphrase, the response I got back was, "We have many exciting business opportunities planned for the near future for xbox.com, but we would be willing to part with the name for $10,000." Long story short, maybe that extra Sun box instead of that domain name wasn't the most prudent business move we could have made; thankfully, I had nothing to do with the business end, so I'm not losing any sleep over it. As for their claims, it looks like it took them a year and a half to get a single press release out; on Internet time where OpenBSD gets scolded for taking 6 f'n days to get a patch out, is that near future?
At any rate, I'm glad to see that domain squatting's bad, except when it happens to Microsoft and open source is good, except when Microsoft uses it, etc., etc.

Addendum

[3ryon]

In other news, all employees of Xbox Technologies were found dead this morning. It seems that during a all-hands strategy meeting was held in a conference room which had a gas leak. Detectives are still puzzeled how the sales people who were teleconfrencing were also killed by the gas leak.

Re:I would have loved to see them hold their groun

[miracle69]

Instead of standing rock solid and getting no cash, how about calling up Sony and asking them how much they'd pay for the trademark....

Now that would've been cool.

HI Mom!

Re:Funny

[babbage]

No no no, that's not it. Microsoft, wise multi billion dollar company that they are, forgot to pay their $35 fee to renew the hotmail.com domain name, thus disabling the service all at once on Christmas Eve, 1999. A guy named Michael Chaney realized what was going on, paid the fee, and went about his business. Microsoft sent him an unsolicited check for $500, but he refused it -- putting the check they sent him up for sale on eBay and promising to give whatever proceeds from the auction (and matching up to $2000) to a charity of the winning bidder's choice.

The links about it are still available online -- Slashdot played it's role in events.

• Slashdot reports that Hotmail is out of service, 24 Dec 1999
• Slashdot report on auction, 18 Jan 2000
• C|Net coverage of the auction, 18 Jan 2000

Re:Ferraris

[malfunct]

Its funny that you worry about the XBox company selling out to MS when from the articals on the page XBox is a company thats all about asking other companies to sell out to them. XBox is an aquisitions company and you can only imagine how evil and cuthroat they are. Looks like thier purpose on life is to run around looking for floundering companies with potential and buy them up for rediculously cheap prices before they blow up and become something big.

Getting cash from MS just to change the name of thier company just fits in to thier plan. I love how you guys berate MS no matter what they do but when another evil corporation comes into view you think they are all good stuff. Blah.