As of two days ago, Microsoft has been indeed confirmed to be the new owners of the Office.com domain that one clever commenter on this blog made a note of almost a month ago (thanks Bob).
The transition of this valuable domain from its previous owners ContactOffice Group – an European company specializing in virtual office solutions since the late 90s – to Microsoft seemed to have occurred on August 4 2009 as the domain’s Whois record notes.
[whois.markmonitor.com] Registrant: Domain Administrator Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond WA 98052 US domains@microsoft.com +1.4258828080 Fax: +1.4259367329 Domain Name: office.com Created on..............: 1999-04-19. Expires on..............: 2019-04-19. Record last updated on..: 2009-08-04.
One would be wise to assume Microsoft paid quite a pretty penny for this rare single-noun and vowels-intact domain that now make its Office Web application suite far more convenient to remember and access. The current Office URL, http://office.microsoft.com, never quite rolled off the tongue.
Now’s a good time as any to start F5-ing the site for updates.
Update: Robin Wauters from TechCrunch corrects a minor detail that the ContactOffice Group didn’t actually own the domain per se, but licensed it from a third-party under a sharing agreement.
19 Comments
John Sedlak
“Office Transtion” – Nice one there.
Long Zheng
Ha! I guess the Microsoft Office team will fix that up
Mr Dilkington
Do they not have spellcheck at Office.com?
Manmohanjit
Not a bad domain. Thinking how much does the domain cost? Haha, what am I talking about, its Microsoft.
tsmorty
Regarding the misspelling there. That html page was provided by the original owners I assume, after clicking the link. So my guess would it would be the fault of Contact Office. Althought it was created in office so someone forgot to F7.
Robin Wauters
Great scoop Long!
Just fyi, I explain in this post that the domain name wasn’t actually purchased from ContactOffice.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/06/confirmed-microsoft-is-the-new-ow ner-of-officecom/
keep up the good work!
Albert
Well at least the Contact Office team used Calibri in the “Transtion” page, wonder if they had Times New Roman before?
But this is good, finally Microsoft was able to get this done. I see the Microsoft Office marketing team being really excited with being able to use “office.com” now.
Darren
All they need to do now is buy search.com, I am sure CBS would sell it to them for the right price.
Kate
Check out the Office Facebook page for Office news and tons of helpful resources to help you use all the features of your Office applications. You can post your questions to the Wall and get help directly from Microsoft!
http://www.facebook.com/office
Cheers,
Kate
MSFT Office Outreach Team
Dick Carlson
Well, if there’s any cash left, “www.BSOD.com” is still for sale. Just sayin’
Avatar X
Given how premium that domain is…..i can estimate that Microsoft could have paid up to 10 million dollars for it if they had to bid over zoho, adobe or google for it.. but if they didn’t . it is still a 3 million dollars domain…the guy/company that owned must be insanely happy to get that kind of money..
Zack
I am wondering how much it cost.
Adam
Does it annoy you that sites like Download Squad don’t credit you for finding it Long?
Long Zheng
@Adam: Generally it’s a little bit frustrating when sites don’t credit or miscredit. However in this case Download Squad did credit, just in a subtle way (third link in the article).
Dubbledore
That leaves Silverlight (Zune also seems to redirects to Zune.net). Looking at some single word branding successes from MS, Windows, Office, (Bing going up too), I wonder if they need a one word branding for WiMo too? Btw I remember read this news of Office.com getting taken by MS and remember visiting the page after reading it elsewhere a few days ago, so you’ve haven’t exactly broken this piece of news.
nyp
Look at the source code, the HTML page is made using Word!
There’s also more juicy stuff in the Document Properties:
(o:Author)Jay Patel(o:Author)
(o:Created)2009-06-29T17:06:00Z(/o:Created)
(o:Company)RetailIQ(/o:Company)
Harparmjot
Is it? (the DOMAIN) worth a dime…so it seems….but is it, & what is the price?
Neotech
it really does
G deep
Nice post man… seems microsoft has got the one more hand now…….
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