Microsoft Forgets To Renew Hotmail.co.uk

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."

Doesn't anyone there have a brain?

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

Weird

[Yarn]

I was under the impression that Nominet [nic.uk] don't allow re-registration if a domain expires, only if it's explicitly released. My domain lapsed a year or so ago (registrar didn't renew it for me in time) but is still in my name, if inactive. They charge about 80 to reactivate a domain, such a money making exercise.

Re:How nice

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

MSs internal domain database?

[perler]

how difficult is it for a company to have database for all domainnames they have, and a field "exp_date"? or do they have one and it's accesss based, written in VB?

PAT

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Webservices and XSD

[boatboy]

I've often wondered about this as a potential problem for webservices and to a lesser degree, XSD specs and XML namespaces. Take for example MapPoint.NET - a pretty cool (if overpriced) service that benefits from a webservice model. But say MapPoint.net rolls back- even temporarily-to somewhere else. First, there's a potential security issue: the lucky individual would get tons of requests, possibly including security info. Second, any mission critical apps- would flop until things got squared away. I guess these could all be overcome by good design, such as creating fall-back domains that the client knows to use, but I've yet to hear much talk of doing this.

maximum renewal length

[NotAnotherReboot]

Is there some kind of maximum renewal length on these domains? It's not like Microsoft doesn't have the money to pay for 20 years (or longer) of the domain, and not worry about it expiring.

The microsoft.com domain expires in May of 2012, hotmail.com in March of 2010, so why aren't they purchasing all of their domains for long periods?

Re:You'd think..

[donnyspi]

you can't. I think 10 years is the limit

Registering a misspelled domain name

[Baron_Yam]

Honestly, I sometimes think about registering Hotmial.com because when I manually enter the url, about 1 in 20 times that's what I end up typing.

Then I think about how many other people with Hotmail accounts might be doing the same thing and how much smoke might start rising from my server, slap myself, and forget the idea for a while.

Re:WHAT THE F$%!

[Trailer Trash]

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...

Re:Why Should they renew?

[reimero]

Actually, I wonder about this. Since they failed to renew, they demonstrated a lack of interest in protecting that aspect of their name and trademark, effectively relinquishing all claimed rights to that domain. It's one thing to deal with a squatter who is trying to make a buck off your good name, it's another entirely to demonstrate a lack of interest.

Is there any legal precedent here?

I don't see how...

[moonboy]

I don't see how this can happen. Network Solutions bugs the crap out of me to renew mine well in advance. They've been sending me renewal notices for a couple of months now for domains I have that will need to be renewed by March and May of 2004!

Why it's being given back to Microsoft.

[sammy baby]

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 [icann.org].

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.

Re:You'd think..

[tom.allender]

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 [e-mail] and tells people so.
  
• Person sends e-mail to [e-mail] and it bounces.
  

Bit annoying.

hotmail.co.uk doesn't have any DNS records ATM...

Re:You'd think..

[Ruis]

You'd think MS would be a registrar.

Re:How nice

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony of course being that that the word actually spelled googol.