While stories of companies and people loosing domain names to big companies are all too common these days – I had never met a person who actually had this happen to them. When I met Asad in Toronto on a recent trip from California, he shared this experience. He registered a domain TECHAOL.COM a few years ago and had it taken from him by America Online. Take a look at the brief video interview below. Please accept my apologies for the poor lighting in the video.
The domain techaol.com is now linked to, and owned by America Online. WHOIS information on the domain shows AOL as the sole owner and no mention of Asad. In fact, what I find most interesting is no mention or record of what techaol.com was before it was taken over (WayBackMachine has no records).
Asad likely has no fight here either – I’m no lawyer – but it seems that having the letters AOL in your domain and being in some way related to technology will land you in a similar situation. Have you met anyone facing the same problem?