Google Restructuring Draws Attention to gTLD of Alphabet Website
Google’s planned restructuring of its corporate apparatus and placing the company under the auspices of the Alphabet holding company (see 1508100066) also drew attention to the URL of the website that Alphabet CEO Larry Page chose to announce the restructuring -- abc.xyz. The .xyz domain, administered by the XYZ.com registry, topped the new gTLD market at our deadline Tuesday with a 16.5 percent share, nTLDstats said. The registry has sold more than 1.14 million .xyz domain names.
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Alphabet was unable to use Alphabet.com as the landing page for its announcement because BMW owns the domain name. Alphabet is a BMW subsidiary that services corporate-owned vehicles. BMW had no plans to sell the Alphabet.com domain name and wasn’t informed in advance of Google’s restructuring announcement about the name of its new holding company, a spokeswoman said. Google didn’t comment.
It’s not particularly important for Alphabet’s domain name to be directly associated with the new holding company’s name, said Phil Corwin, principal of e-commerce and IP law consultancy Virtualaw, in an interview. “The main interface that most people still have with Google is with Google.com, and that’s likely to continue.” Choosing an .xyz domain name is an interesting choice and it likely gives all gTLDs additional public exposure, he said. Unless Alphabet uses abc.xyz for more than a landing page, “I’m not sure how much of a long-term effect there will be,” Corwin said.
Google’s restructuring doesn’t change the company’s impact on consumers, Consumer Watchdog said Monday. “Google by any other name is still the Internet giant,” Consumer Watchdog Director-Privacy Project John Simpson said in a news release. “Alphabet through what will now be called its subsidiary will continue to track us around the web and build digital dossiers about us. It makes little difference to Google’s users.”