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Microsoft Forgets To Renew Hotmail.co.uk

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the whoops dept.

Saint Aardvark writes "The Register is reporting that Microsoft forgot to renew their hotmail.co.uk domain. A Good Samaritan renewed it for them, but was unable to get a response from anyone at Microsoft. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

7 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't anyone there have a brain? by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is it really that hard to assign one person the task of being responsible for domain renewals?

    Jeez, even if that's all somebody did it would be worth paying someone $20,000/year just to avoid serious cock-ups like this one.

    --

    "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
  2. Re:How nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Not childish. Probably just extremely embarrassed. This happened before in 1999 with the U.S. Hotmail. When that happened, Microsoft graciously cut a check to Michael Chaney (who helped them out by renewing it with his own money).

    Later on, Mr. Chaney decided that the check was worth some money, so he put it up on Ebay for auction, promising to donate the proceeds to a charity of the buyer's choice.

    My company won that auction and we purchased the check for $7000 which was then immediately donated to the Sisters of the Road Cafe in Portland, Oregon. We've still got the check, a check for $500.

    Microsoft paid Mr. Chaney $500 dollars as a gesture of good will. They didn't have to do that, you know.

    MS is not being childish, they probably are too busy throwing ice water all over themselves to cool off their extreme embarrassment that this has happened twice now.

    (posting anonymously so that nobody can associate my username with the company I work for)

  3. Re:How nice by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You could do the Altavista.com thing. Back when the net was young, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Silicon Valley were real small furry creatures from Silicon valley, the good people at Digital Equipment Corporation (now a subsidary of HPaq-U-Mart) created a search engine, christened it "Altavista", and gave it a nice, memorable, domain name:
    www.altavista.digital.com
    From DEC's point of view, Altavista was both a nice toy, and a cool technology demo. DEC would make the money from people knowing it was a DEC product and buying DEC software and hardware.

    Then along came a third party, and registered "altavista.com". They set up a site that looked exactly like Altavista.digital.com, except for adverts and a disclaimer at the bottom saying that it wasn't actually the Altavista at www.altavista.digital.com. When a user searched using altavista.com, it redirected the search query to the real thing.

    Digital finally bought the domain after a year or so of confusion and complaints.

    This sort of behaviour is why we can't have nice things.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  4. Re:WHAT THE F$%! by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes. Contrary to the Reg's article, I didn't "sign it over to Microsoft", I simply paid their outstanding invoice.

    As I explained it to reporters at the time, if I went and made your mortgage payment I wouldn't own your house.

    This particular case seems to be different than the passport.com case, though. It looks like the .co.uk domains get tossed back in the pool quicker, and the person actually did buy the domain. Part of the story is that they were trying to contact Microsoft to transfer it back to them and Microsoft wouldn't pay attention. It's difficult to be a good samaritan some days...

    --
    Do you have ESP?
  5. Why it's being given back to Microsoft. by sammy+baby · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I keep seeing posts which run along the lines of, "Why give it back to them? Just take it and make 'em pay through the nose!"

    Stupid, dumb, dumb, dumb. On the one hand, Microsoft has more lawyers than God. For another, it's just wrong to register a name with the express intention of screwing someone else. And lastly, it's definied by ICANN as registering a domain in bad faith.

    b. Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith. For the purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(iii), the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be present, shall be evidence of the registration and use of a domain name in bad faith:
    (i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name...

    And now you know.
  6. Re:You'd think.. by tom.allender · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You'd think that Microsoft would be bright enough to give hotmail.co.uk an MX record so that it actually works.

    The present situation:
    • User enters hotmail.co.uk into browser and it redirects to hotmail.com.
    • User believes that their e-mail address is bleh@hotmail.co.uk and tells people so.
    • Person sends e-mail to bleh@hotmail.co.uk and it bounces.


    Bit annoying.

    hotmail.co.uk doesn't have any DNS records ATM...
  7. Re:You'd think.. by Ruis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You'd think MS would be a registrar.